Hello crazy, my old friend. What can I say, I missed the thrill that one can only get with sudden bursts of speed atop an animal with the brain size of an apple.
In November of 2023, I returned to my insane equestrian roots of fox hunting. It was a soft return, initiated by attending the opening meet of the Brazos Valley Hounds. As I drove to the hunt with my thoroughbred, in my own truck and with my own trailer, I flashed on so many memories from 17 years before, when I first started hunting as a 22-year-old who had one horse, no truck, no trailer, and no sense.
Cue harp music. Blur camera.
The year was 2006. The city was Livermore, California. I worked my first big girl job out of college, as a tech writer with an engineering company. Meaning I sat in a cubicle all day and translated engineer into English. A task that isn’t as easy as it sounds. I lived in an apartment with my first sheltie, Trinity, and boarded Dante, my first and laziest horse. Yes, lots of firsts here, as it usually is when one is so young. A fellow boarder (named Allison) noticed all the trouble I had in attempting to squeeze out just a tiny ounce of effort from my gelding. She simply said, “You should bring him to a fox hunt with us. That’ll liven him up!”
Gifs weren’t part of the every day vernacular 17 years ago (I swear I just gained three extra gray hairs typing that), but my reaction to such a daring proclamation was likely:
So lazy was Dante I didn’t think a nuclear blast would liven him up. But sure, I told her, I’d try it. I can’t remember what I recalled at the time, since we’re now 17 years later (can someone order me some prune juice?), but it’s likely I wasn’t even aware fox hunting was still a thing, especially in the United States. My closest experience was the animated scene from Mary Poppins.
Not long after that conversation I had with Allison, Dante and I tagged along in their rig for a pre-season hunt, known as “cubbing.” She loaned me a tweed jacket and I believe a contoured saddle pad, and away we went.
Let me tell you… my lazy horse was anything but. I didn’t even recognize him. Who are you and what did you do with my half-dead boy? Where I’d usually have to cajole him to do anything more than a foot-dragging saunter, on the fox hunt I merely thought “maybe we should canter here” and he’d beat me to it. In fact it was more like “Hey human, I’m cantering!”
It was clear Dante loved hunting and I loved Dante hunting. It was like riding a horse with a pulse and a fuck. Who knew?
I joined the Los Altos hounds as a junior member, starting off in second field (walk, trot, canter). Let not the WTC label fool you. Hunting was by far the most dangerous and thrilling pursuit I have ever done. Every weekend I’d wake up at 2 am with digestive issues best left to the imagination, wondering why WHY I was putting myself through this. Yet every weekend I’d go back.
Would I lose a stirrup or two as my horse galloped down hill? Of course!
Would my horse flip his tongue over the bit (this is not the bit’s design) making what limited steering I had completely vanish? YOU BET!
Would my already low-carriage horse duck his head to get away from my hands and make it feel like I was riding a headless equine? WE. ARE. HAVING. FUN!
Would my loyal steed scream absolute bloody murder when he was separated from his precious trailer-mate? YOU CANNOT DENY TRUE LOVE!
Did we hand-gallop through woods, branches, downhill, over ice, and through streams even though I was not a seasoned rider? HOW ELSE WILL YOU LEARN IF NOT THROUGH TERROR?
And so it was. I’d be a tense, nervous wreck reciting, aloud, Hail Marys, as we carried on through the California countryside. But then came my first ever real gallop in January of 2007. I know this because, fortunately, there’s still a time stamp on the meta data for the below photos.
We’d not been hunting thirty minutes, following the hounds at a casual pace. We were on the side of a hill. This is important to the story. Suddenly the hounds hit. That’s fox hunting terminology for them grabbing a scent and running after it. The master and huntsmen blared their horns and it was time to go. And I mean GO!!!!
I can’t remember who it was, but I watched someone trying to control their horse as they made their way in a somewhat reasonable manner down the hill. Dante, my horse, said nuts to that. “Control”? Please. We have a coyote to chase and it’s time to fly. He barreled down the hill. There were actual tears in my eyes and in my soul. I was sure this, right here, was how I would die. All because of what? My horse was so lazy he’d drag his feet in the arena? That just saved me farrier costs. Ungrateful much?
Dante passed horses, who probably looked down upon him as a lowly ranch horse, as if he was the favorite to win at the Belmont. I remember him and me speeding up a hill and under an electric tower, then down the hill again to a road which, if you were to look at it from the side, was shaped like a U. As in a steep down and a steep up. This was it. The end. There, right there, that’s where they’d put the cross and my flowers. I remember having ALL of these thoughts, slowed down, in that moment. I don’t remember how much I screamed, but I knew I did scream.
For those of you who do not ride horses, screaming isn’t what anyone would deem helpful. In fact, it’s counter productive. No equestrian has ever said: “You know what would make this dramatic moment calmer? Screaming.” Yet I knew I screamed only because sometime after the gallop ended, as we’d caught up with the hunt master, I was coughing. For I had swallowed a bug, like some wide mouth frog.
What did I scream, you ask? Such salient advice as “slow down”, “stop” and probably “whoa” for good measure. Pointless, might as well have screamed the Gettysburg Address, that’s how my horse interpreted my wishes.
How fast did we actually go that run? Faster than 27 mph. Seeing as how I couldn’t get my horse to slow down with my water-skiing rein yanking, screeches, or prayers to the Lord our God, I pulled behind Dave and his paint (can’t remember the horse’s name). Dave had a GPS and said his speed was 27 mph. And I caught up to him like he was a grandma. My horse was fast, and I’d seen him book it before, but that was the first time I’d been along for the ride.
Here’s a photo that was taken shortly after:
One more since it’s a memorable event:
This was before iPhones, Facebook or what we now know as “social media.” Excuse me as I rub Bengay on my knees.
It was this hunt that kicked it all off for me, because after the run, after the check (where we stop to gather the hounds which you can see in the right hand side of the photo above with Allison), I had a realization: I didn’t die. I didn’t fall. I didn’t lose a stirrup. I lost a little dignity with the screaming, sure. But did anyone actually hear me? Maybe the bug I ingested whole, RIP. But I think…. I think I might have had… fun.
This is when things started to click in my addled mind. I’d survived it. So maybe I wasn’t a crappy rider. Maybe I had promise. I’d still go on to break my elbow in a way I wouldn’t ever do now, but perspective. Learning to become a better rider through fox hunting is like learning to become a better swimmer by someone throwing you into the English Channel. You best learn and learn quick.
I went on to gain a lot of confidence after that. I’d figured out I was the one making my horse go faster by tensing up, as someone much older and wiser than me traded horses with me on a hunt (Dante had reared straight up) and I then made the new horse go faster too. See, when you’re tense, your legs tighten and that communicates to the horse to go faster.
In the horse world, often times bad horse behavior can be attributed to the rider being shit. That’s kind of good news in that I can more easily fix me than I can give my horse a better personality. Once I realized I was making my horse speed up, I could then just not do that. Let me tell you, the second I figured it out, I’ve been the most chill rider on a hunt. Are these my legs or is it jello? Who’s to say. But I do not tense up anymore. As the memes go, only one of you is allowed to spook, and it’s never the rider.
So I moved on and I moved up. Physically up. Let me show you two photos:
This is bad form on Courtney. Dante was taking that jump too steeply and I grabbed him in his mouth. Bad! But also Dante has a tendency to dip his head due to his breeding (he’s got a naturally low headset) AND to get away from my hands so he can do whatever he wants. Nisha does the same thing. Most of the time bad horse behavior is due to the rider, but not always. I cannot remember WHEN that hunter pace was, only that Dante and I cleaned up. As in he did VERY well. The hills are green so it must have been spring time. I added the photo to my computer in April of 2007, if that means anything.
We took that jump twice that day. The second time was much more relaxed:
Now my leg wasn’t really in the right position, and I should’ve released the rein even more, but I’m looking at this photo 17 years later. Of course I’ve gotten better. My hair has gotten much shorter, though. And not as healthy. I love it when I move to a state with shitty water. Oh well.
This spring 2007 hunter pace made it into my longterm memory banks as one of the funnest times I’ve ever had on a horse. Dante and I took so many jumps and obstacles with total confidence, and as we cantered through a pond I exclaimed “Yahoo!” because damn. So much fun it shouldn’t have been legal. I ended up taking home blue ribbons that day and a trophy, so Dante and I will actually “live on” in a display case somewhere. I remember one of the men I rode with, Wendell, husband to Allison, praised me and Dante for our boldness over big 3 foot coops, which we’d not taken during hunts. It made it into my core memories and I’ll forever appreciate him for that.
In December of that same year:
I still have that helmet. I still have the desire to nitpick my outfit. No I wasn’t a plus size rider, it was cold and I wore my bulky hoody with a safety vest over the top. Hence looking like the Michelin man. But my form had greatly improved. I was so much more relaxed as we took this jump.
It was after the spring hunter pace that I decided Dante and I were ready to go first field when hunt season began in the fall. I remember that Dante ducked out on the first jump at opening meet (he would do this, and this was him being naughty) and then he’d fly over everything else the remainder of the season. And I mean fly. That small little Quarter Horse had no problems at all keeping up with the much taller and leaner thoroughbreds and warmbloods in the field. I’m forever grateful to this little horse for teaching me so much and giving me all the confidence I have now. Perhaps too much confidence.
I no longer wake up at 2 am with raging bowels. I instead awake with a start at 4 am when the alarm blares and I think “rude.” I now feed my steed at 6 am at home, I no longer board and haven’t in over a decade. I load the horse into my trailer at 7, and make my way to the hunt to ride out at 10. So much changed in the last 17 years. Returning to the hunt field felt like returning home, to a part of me that yearns to be seen and set free. Every new hunt ends too soon, I want to keep going (so do my horses), and I’m always eager to get back out to the hunt the following week. It is such a thrill, and I’m immensely grateful to Allison and Wendell for opening this world to me, and for the slow, lazy Quarter Horse, Dante, now retired, who ran me into that world under barely controlled chaos. Tally ho.
