Many a little girl dreams of owning her own pony. With visions of a flowing mane and cascading tail the little girl secretly prays that her parents will surprise her with one on her birthday. This pony will be her everything, her greatest source of pride and the holder of her heart. The little girl daydreams of brushing her new best friend and whispering all of her secrets into those beautifully curved ears. She will nuzzle into the pony’s neck and inhale the sweet scent of hair and hay. Life will be perfect when she gets her pony.

Or if you are me you will be told that for your tenth birthday you are getting a pony. Your parents take you to look at several. A cute bay Connemara really catches your eye and it rides like a dream. It isn’t white like the one you ride at the stable but a deep chocolate brown with a glossy black mane. You could really love this pony. Then they drop the bomb. At the rate you’re growing (already 5 feet tall) you will outgrow this pony in no time. Sorry kid. No pony for you. But you can get a horse.

What? Okay! A horse is something entirely different. Like those clothes Mom buys a size too big so you’ll have room to grow. Well she’s right about the clothes so she’s right about the horse. The want ads in the local paper are filled with horses for sale. Just look under the Livestock for Sale listing. Mom finds a local dealer not far from the house. The lady claims to have several nice horses at reasonable prices. So Mom, Dad, and you jump in the station wagon and drive over to the farm. After some getting to know you pleasantries the lady tacks a handsome bay Quarter horse. You mount and trot him around. He seems pleasant enough. Then another bomb is dropped. Mom says she doesn’t like how he moves. He paddles his feet. Next! None of the other horses are a good fit for your novice abilities or Mom’s horsewoman eye. Your dad just watches, silent and patient. Sweaty and disappointed you are no longer excited and want to go home. Then the lady says that she has one more horse that she had picked up at the auction. She heads into the barn and returns with a feed scoop of corn in one hand and a lead rope in the other. That lead rope is attached to the sorriest looking horse you have ever seen. And your parents buy it.

On a hot summer day in early June of 1985 that was how I met my first horse a sorry sack of bones. But, my mom took one look at him and said, “he’s got good legs and a gentle eye”. The seller had picked him up at auction and decided that if he didn’t sell he’d be going back. Now this horse was of average height. Not too big but plenty tall for my ever growing legs. He was rib thin and under muscled. He had scrapes and cuts all over his body. But his face…..oh that face…it was TERRIBLE. It was a mess of scrapes and scabs from his steely gray forelock to his bubblegum pink muzzle. He had apparently tripped on the gravel driveway and face planted. I wondered if he’d ever grow hair on that face. But he had the sweetest, saddest dark brown eyes. This horse had a face only a mother could love and my mother was just the one to fall for it. My parents paid the going meat price for him, $1 per pound, and given his emaciated state he ended up totaling $700. I’m not going to lie. I was totally excited about getting him.

Shortly after our first meeting my gentle eyed, dappled gray gelding was transported to his forever home. I can’t tell you the exact date but it was a weekend in mid June. I was down the road at my neighbor’s birthday party. If memory serves me correctly we played twister. Anyway, I surely wasn’t alone in my anticipation of the arrival of Bold Ute Haven. Yes, that was his name. It said so right on his papers from the Quarter Horse Registry. They also said that he was born June 5, 1977. We’d be celebrating our birthdays together from then on. How did this horse, bred and born in Iowa, make his way to New York? I’ll never know and I don’t care. He ended up exactly where he needed to be.

That first day with Ute on the farm was the most exciting day of my young life. I had my very own horse. Not one of fantasies and childish imaginations. But a horse like the ones I’d read about in all my chapter books. He was a horse that needed a lot of tender loving care and I was a girl with big emotions in need of an outlet. This was a match made in heaven. I couldn’t wait to brush him, clean his cuts, and make him feel better. Oh yeah. I also couldn’t wait to ride. Little did I know that all those fiction books would have nothing on the reality I’d be living.

I will end the story telling here because what I started to tell you is just the beginning of a decades long love story that deserves an entire book. That day, that singular day, changed my life in a way I wouldn’t appreciate until I was so much older. It is the classic girl meets horse, girl nurtures horse, horse changes the girl’s life kind of tale. And just like any good love story this one has every part from the meet cute to the honeymoon phase to the death do us part. But I don’t want to give too much away, the story will unfold in future wonderings. For now I have to focus on this one that’s front and center on my mind.

You may be wondering why I am thinking about an event that happened 35 years ago. Well, truth be told I think about Bold Ute Haven every single day. Every time I’m in the barn I still refer to the front stall as his stall. I still use his bridle on the mare that was given to me after his death. I use all the skills I honed while working with him to make the current horses better. I get teary eyed writing about him because my heart aches from missing him. However, I never pondered on the life lesson that I gleaned from that first summer with him.

I was merely a 10 year old novice rider and he was an 8 year old horse with questionable skills when we became a pair. I had been horseback riding for two years and I was obsessed. Now my Mom was probably equally if not more horse obsessed. Quite possibly she had ulterior motives. This was a woman who always wanted to ride and own a horse but growing up poor in Hudson and Bergen Counties, NJ she never had the opportunity to live out her dream. But she decided at the age of 36, when I her youngest of six was 3 years old, to make it come true by taking riding lessons at the local stable. Then within a few years my brother and sister were signed up for lessons leaving a little Stephanie to sit and observe from the ring side. It was stable policy that no one under the age of 8 could ride. So I had many years of study before I ever threw a leg over a saddle. I’m sure you can guess what my eighth birthday present was.

So by the time I turned 10 Mom already had 7 years of riding experience under her belt. She didn’t just learn to ride. She absorbed everything horse related. Here was a woman with passion and conviction. The reason my parents even bought the country home was because she knew one day one way or another she’d get a horse to put in the pasture. My Dad knew he was not going to win. It was either buy a second home or pay the insanely high boarding fees at the riding stable. Obviously investing in land was the smart choice and it goes without saying that Ute was as much my Mom’s horse as he was mine.

But what was it about that horse? Why him? Sure the price was right but money wasn’t the issue. Something tugged at Mom’s heart that day at the horse trader’s barn. Here was a horse that had absolutely nothing going for him. He couldn’t even trot in a circle. He certainly wasn’t beautiful. Mom just kept saying the same thing over and over, “He’s got good legs and a gentle eye.” She saw something special in that horse and that was enough for her. And I thank the heavens every single day that she chose to focus on those two good qualities because I can’t imagine how different my life would have been if she had only seen the list of cons.

My Mom could have chosen to see a neglected, underwhelming, dud of a horse. In fact when the first(and only) trainer she hired called him a waste of her time and best suited for dog food Mom didn’t get rid of Ute she got rid of the trainer. From that day forward the two of us figured it out and with a lot of patience, trial and error, and simple love for the horse we accomplished something that trainer wouldn’t even attempt. We turned our worthless waste of time into a champion (in fact that very same trainer had to eat a lot of crow when her students went up against the two of us). It didn’t happen that first summer or the first year. No, it took quite a few years and incredible amounts of dedication. Just sitting here thinking and typing I can’t help but get a little misty when I think of our first great achievement - Ute trotted a circle for the first time and I cried as if I had just won gold at the Olympics.

I can’t help but to wonder about how that lesson shaped my life. The trainer was referred to as Robin who walks on water because she was a miracle worker with horses. Yet after two lessons with Ute and me she said he was a waste of her time and wouldn’t work with him anymore. I remember feeling crushed. There I was a child with high hopes and a full heart being told that the my best friend was nothing more than Alpo with a heartbeat. I was definitely sad that day but I was not defeated. I became driven. Something turned on inside of me and never shut off. On that day I learned that there are two very different people in the world. There are those who are conceited and selfish and there are those who choose to see the beauty in others (even if its just good legs and gentle eyes). I definitely was not going to be like the former.

Imagine if life was as simple as loving a pathetic excuse for a horse and believing he could be something so much more. When I was working with Ute I treated him as if I believed he could win any grand prix equestrian event. I knew that he was not that kind of horse but I never told him that. I never rode thinking that I deserved a better or more talented horse. Nor did I ever ride thinking I was the worst rider even with my propensity for falls. No, every day that I rode, my goal was to (stay on and) be our best, better than the day before but not better than the next. Instead of dwelling on what we weren’t mastering I’d end each lesson on a positive note. It was so easy to celebrate our accomplishments and revisit the failures. I had to come up with solutions and then remember what worked for us as well as what did not. That my friend is what I call experiential learning.

So now you’re wondering just what the conclusion of this convoluted pondering is. Well, this got me reflecting on how we could approach people ( partners, children, family members, coworkers, friends and strangers) as if we believe they have limitless potential. What if we looked beyond the surface and the superficial to witness an overflowing heart and original thoughts? What if we spent the time truly learning about what works for them instead of how we can make things work for us? What if we accept that being okay is just as valuable as being great? As a child I lived from ride to ride. I worked hard but never thought about the changes that were happening. I just felt pride every time my equine partner and I accomplished something. Now, I think about the hours my young self spent reading books on training techniques and then trying them. I can’t count the hours spent both in and out of the saddle considering what to do next. Then experiencing the pure joy of becoming a completely in sync team of two. It was such a powerful lesson for child me even if the greater implication was lost on her. I’m just glad I’m here to appreciate it now. I’ve since realized that bringing that same openness and dedication to my other relationships makes them all the better, even if none of them can compare to the one I had with Ute.