A taste of my new book "Riding at Fairhunt"

Please share your comments; I'd love to hear from you.

Riding at Fairhunt ...for love, life and therapy

by Susan Skolnick-Lozano

Acknowledgments

I have been extremely fortunate to have the generous help and support from several different camps. My husband, Carlos, has been long standing and constant in his encouragement of my work, as well as my daughters, Esther and Rebekah. My father is the strong man behind the scenes, who has kept the farm up and going so I could pursue my riding, and work with my students.

There are also the many wonderful people and families connected with Fairhunt Farm who are the fabric of our work here. The true success of putting this book out there was the unselfish goodness and affection of my friend, Lyndele von Schill. Lyndele's long hours at the computer, helping me to set up and get 'Riding at Fairhunt' in the public awareness gave me the way forward. She gave our family support through the dark days after Rebekah's accident, and in Rebekah's time of transition and need.

I would like to dedicate this work to my grandmother Hattie; beloved and dear.

Introduction

Like many riding families there are three generations of us. My father, John, me (Susan), and my daughters--Rebekah and Esther. It is our passion, and we share it with all of you who find that irreplaceable happiness atop a trusty mount. Your horse and your friend. That is the love. In the following chapters I would like to take you through and interesting journey that we came to as riders and as a family. I will share riding techniques, styles, the ways to victories and the graciousness of defeats that I feel as essential to good sportsmanship in any endeavor. These are truly life lessons as I will repeat through my book.

Then I will share how we, as a family, dealt with the near loss of our daughter Rebekah in an automobile accident and how riding, with patience, encouragement, and therapy brought Rebekah to the level she is at today, and how she is dealing with the affects of her Traumatic Brain Injury. For us, Rebekah’s is a lifetime of recovery but through family support, plus the families at Fairhunt Farm, and a grand old master, Cabit, our Registered Quarter Horse, we are moving ahead where no one expected us to go. ‘Thought’--- how one thinks...positive thinking--- is a motivating mantra, and we are ever positive in our thinking as well as our teaching program here at Fairhunt Farm.


Part One...Riding for love.

Chapter One

The girls. Rebekah and Esther Lozano

The girls were young when I took them to their first stable to see if they had what it takes to ride. That is, so to speak, from the ground up. They started at a place in Massachusetts when they were each 7 years old, working as helpers and doing pony parties. That meant that they helped to tack up quiet old ponies and traveled to sites where the ponies were hired to walk around for an hour or so with young kids at birthday events who knew sometimes nothing about horses, but loved being on one and lead around by my little daughters. Rebekah started first when she was 7, (she is 3 and ½ years older than Esther) and Rebekah’s reward for her services was that she got to ride when the day was over. Not each time—but the pony parties were an every weekend task until winter, so she rode whenever time permitted. The pony party workers got to ride around the barn a few times and then put the ponies away. Brushed and fed. Each in their proper stall or run-in. The older kids who were a part of the pony party work force would be their examples and teachers. I stayed clear. It was up to them to either cut it or quit it. Rebekah was in love. For Hanukkah that year I bought her a saddle, and my very practical husband, Carlos, who has ever been a helpmate and support to my wildest ideas, mildly protested when he said, “I hope you are not planning to get what goes under that...” Well, needless to say my grandmother (with my encouragement) bought Rebekah a sweet young Quarter Horse she named Bonnie. That was her first horse.


So now Rebekah was 10 and had her own horse. This is what happens to lots of kids and their families. You get a horse and then you ride. Right? Wrong. Let’s look at how this works: In the United States, it is usually the case that girls are the primary riders of horses until it comes to the upper levels of any discipline. Hunt Seat, Show Jumping, Dressage, and Western. At that point we begin to see more men riding. But right now I am concentrating on young riders from 4 to 14 or so.

I find that most young girls think of horses in romantic terms. They look at the grace and beauty of the animal and see the movement, then picture themselves out in a field riding with the wind in their hair and having zero problems. They are on the animal that they love but they fail to understand a basic foundation to the horse-rider relationship. The rider–although smaller than the horse--is the one with the larger brain, and thus ‘the good leader’. The rider must have a plan, and not be tentative about executing it. This means, for example, when the rider wants to trot, their horse will trot. When the rider wants to walk, then that is the plan they want to stick with. Good leaders are not bullies, so they don’t haul back on the reins and yell to get the job done. In the pages ahead, I will go through all the steps necessary to become aware of how to develop that horse-rider relationship. I am using specific scenarios of what has happened with my daughters as riders and students, and our own riders here at Fairhunt Farm. These are what I call ‘life lessons’. I always tell my students that if you can ride a horse in new territory, tricky weather conditions, or a green and athletic horse who wants his way, and handle it successfully then you are ready for most of what life surprises us with.

Thinking makes it so.