It was an autumn evening, two hours after the sun had set. The air carried the first fruits of a crisp chill that marked the end of the summer season. An overhead floodlight illuminated the large round pen where I was lopping Rose, a beautiful, five-year-old chestnut, quarter horse mare. Rose was pushing against the bit and as we moved along the inner side of the rail, she marked each strike of her front lead with an accompanying snort.
I had never ridden anything like Rose before! She was consumed with pent-up energy because she hadn’t been ridden in a very long time, and I struggled to hold her back from breaking into a gallop. With every ounce of her being she longed for a good gallop. With every ounce of my being, I longed to let her. But my friend was in the pen with me riding TJ and she wasn’t an experienced rider, so I had to keep Rose at a reasonably safe speed.
The next day, I began riding Rose on a regular basis and yes, I had plenty of opportunities to open her up in the pastures on Rocky Top’s property. When I learned that she was for sale, I knew that I had to bring her into the family!
Rose was a great granddaughter of the AQHA stallion, Leo, and when I learned this, her energy and earnest need for speed made perfect sense. Leo was acclaimed in his early years on the racetrack, then due to severe injuries, was retired and used as a sire for breeding additional performance horses. Rose heavily resembled Leo too! Her chestnut coat, her confirmation and striking head with her snowy white blaze foretold that she was of his bloodlines.
Rose or Rosie and I, began our journey galloping across the autumn fields, heavily grazed down except for yellow wildflowers that grew thick along the ground. We galloped unrestrained as a team until she was spent, then trotted and finally walked to cool her down. But I also knew that I needed to start teaching Rose how to regulate her speed. When I began enforcing lessons on collection, she adamantly balked, shaking her head and snorting. This required dedicated years of consistent work, but we eventually got there.
Rosie was very intelligent, a quick learner and had a keen intuition when a child was on her back. All of my kids could ride her. It was only with me that she allowed her spirit to fully shine. If her rider’s position “felt” precarious, Rosie came to an immediate halt.
For several years I spent about five days a week with Rose. Eventually I moved her away from Rocky Top to a closer location. But housing developers began to make monetary offers to stable owners for their land. These offers were too good to resist, and the property was sold. Two of the stables where I boarded sold their properties that were soon turned them into housing additions. After moving Rose 2 times, I found myself faced with a dilemma when I had to board her almost 45 minutes away from my house. Jeff and I resolved this problem by purchasing property with an open stable for Rosie. Suddenly, she became part of the family’s everyday activities. I couldn’t have been more thrilled.
There were two situations turned my mare into a puddle of anxiety. One of them was thunderstorms. Thunderstorms frightened her to the point that she would colic! Almost every thunderstorm while we were at Rocky Top Rose ending up at the veterinarian’s clinic. This was something I was keenly aware of when we moved her on our property.
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The other conundrum, was Rosie had a deep-seated terror for… well…
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Rosie was my soulmate horse. Together we watched and implemented the Natural Horsemanship training concepts as they swept the world. These new concepts were based on animal science research, and they changed the way most of us handle our horses. I was an advent student of these new methods, and as I applied them while working with Rosie, a magical, close bond that I had always longed for developed between us. It was spiritual really. The kind of bond where you to know what your horse is thinking. Suddenly Rose was whinnying at me when I appeared and nickering greetings trotting to me when she saw I was heading toward the barn.
Several months after we moved Rosie to our property, I took her back to Rocky Top to breed her. Her stallion was a stunning black tobiano. The two of them took a liking to each other and when I brought Rose home, she called for him heartsick. While Rose was being breed, hideous fires broke out in Mexico, filling the air with a heavy, thick smog. While our little baby was at its most fragile state. As it took form and grew, livestock around us were dying from the unhealthy atmosphere.
This is a subject that is still, to this day, very difficult for me to think about. The memory triggers the same heartsick emotion, I felt so many years ago when Rosie’s foal, Phantom, was born. He was so hideously deformed that we had to had to quickly and humanely euthanized him.
My veterinarian told me that he knew of other horses and cattle that were giving birth to babies with similar deformities. I was devastated. The next day I called my friends at Rocky Top and something truly magical happened.
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Throughout my life, I have enjoyed a career as an actor. I was very fortunate enough to work with some very skilled directors and trainers who taught me the art of character development. They also taught me how to use my personal experiences, my pain, to bring to life a character that I was portraying. While my children were young, I was a stay-at-home mom, except for a 20-year career in the fitness industry that allowed me to schedule my work around the children’s needs. However, during these years, I also learned that I could “act” and develop characters on paper and soon I became a published writer.
After a few years had distanced me from the tragic night that Rosie’s foal was born, a story began to form in my mind. The plot centered on a horse I molded after Rose, named Mahogany, and my two daughters, Juliann and Michele, who were both facing extremely difficult circumstances in their young lives. For five years I played with the storyline in my mind, before literally, taking pen to paper.
Then an amazing thing happened, Jeff and I bought a 100-acre ranch in Brock, TX. The ranch was to use on weekends, but I often spent a week or two there. After exploring the land, I was stunned to discover that the layout was almost exactly the same as the fictional ranch I had created for the Caldridge family in my book. So, I decided to format the layout of the land and out house, as the Caldridge family’s homestead.
Thirty some years later, that first book has become a 3-book series that I call Emerald’s Hill. The first book, Mahogany – Blaze, is the book that I’m working toward having published.