10. How your family/friends feel about your riding
I’m lucky in that my husband also rides. He only started riding when he met me, but he doesn’t ride “because of” me. He took one lesson, loved it, and booked private lessons to get better faster. I never forced any of it on him. We took lessons separately but went and watched each other when we lived in NJ.
When we got to CA, lessons were very expensive with a lot of caveats and a lot of pressure to lease or show at the good barns. So we decided to buy horses and do self care. It was seriously cheaper to own horses and ride them every day (if we wanted to) than it was to take once weekly lessons.
We go together to the barn and ride together so there’s no jealousy of my time being spent on riding as it’s also time spent doing something together for us.
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| @ Rancho San Antonio Open Space Reserve (SF Bay in the far background) |
My parents are happy that I’m happy now. Growing up, they were annoyed at the cost and at having to drive me to lessons, but now they only have to worry about me dying. My mom also worries about dumb things like being convinced my horses lead terrible, neglected lives if they have to live out in pasture (1 of them used to). It doesn’t matter that horses WANT to live outside, she thinks it’s terrible.
My dad rode a bunch as a kid and had ponies growing up so he was very supportive growing up. He’d take me for trail rides and vacation rides. Last summer, he came out and did a 5 night pack trip in the Sierras with my husband and me.
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| Dad, Husband, Me on a pack trip |
My friends mostly don’t care. A few have come out to go on little trail rides and also to pet baby chickens when we have them, so they like that I have horses, but it’s not a big deal to them.