So we had just moved to Virginia. I had been riding for a year,
and eager to proceed. I used to be a figure skater, and traveled all over
Europe competing, winning the Bitburg Cup, the Hamburg cup and I won
regional in State, National, and Countrywide for three years running. I loved ice skating, but it was too bland, I needed to have something more than a
rink, I needed a real friend.
When we moved to Georgia after Germany, I started figure
skating and taking lessons from my science teacher, Mrs. Cottingham. I rode a 12 year old Tennessee Walking Horse named Red. He was a great horse, but not what I was looking for. Then was our move to Virginia.
We had originally went to Haydown Farms to look at a horse named Star to lease, but we decided that it would be better if I excelled first.

So my mother, Nicole, started paying for lessons for me, and I got better every lesson. My first lesson, I rode a horse named Hunter. Then Lauren, my trainer, decided I was too advanced for him, and put me on a horse I
had known as Annie. The first time I saw her, she was a short, skinny, gangly creature that had a look in her eye like she had seen hell and back. I wearily started grooming her down, and when I bent over to clean out her hooves. She turned her head around and bit me in the butt three times in a row!

I saddled her up and held on for my life as she raced around the small arena. When I got off her, I asked Lauren why she was like that. Lauren looked at me and said,"Annie used to be a Race Horse. She was sold to a slaughter house where I bought her. They destroyed her papers, so I gave her the name Annabelle's Wish. And now here she stands, skinny and worthless."

After that lesson, I looked at Annie in a new way. I was more gentle with her. And three months later, it payed off. In April, I had just finished a lesson, and was about to clean out her hooves. I had bent over and was about to grab her hoof, when something spooked her. She reared and before I could move, she hit me in the mouth on the way up, and the forehead on the way down. After she landed again, she, for the first time, walked over to me, and placed her head on my shoulder. Since then, I would go to the barn at 8:30 in the morning, and I would call her name, and she
would canter down the hill to me. My trainer never really believed me, I don't think. But soon, June Fourth came, and it was time for my first show. We were in the Novice Pleasure, Equitation,Eighteen inch Jumps(Four of them), and Showmanship. We took fourth in Showmanship, and Jumping, thired in Pleasure, and second in Equitation. I was so proud of her.

But I realised, that show was my first, and her last. She was Twenty-two years old. Now, at age Twenty-three, my trainer sold her to our trailer man, Byron, and she will live out the rest of her days as a mother figure, helping to calm down fillies and colts. Everyday since the accident where she kicked me in the mouth, I've promised her Two things. One, that no matter what happened, we would always be together, and Two, that I would get into horse racing, and win a cup in her name. I wasn't able to keep my first promise, but I know I will keep the second.

Now, every night, before I go to bed, I dream of us Cantering through the Fields like we used to. Racing the horses in the field, and running into the flock of geese nestled in the far pasture. And I remember our first show, where she made me proud. And my favorite memory I will ever remember, is her walking down the hill to me, for our last lesson together, and her being as old as she was, and in so much pain, she still came. I was
her true owner, and she will always be the only horse for me.