Wonderful Beginners
by Barbara Ellin Fox
I love this French and Saunders clip about a girl who loves riding but has to do everything she can to put a positive spin on her accomplishments or lack there of. She doesn’t have a high rate of success but she has big dreams. She has more things going against her than for her, but she’s persistent. And she and her friend find satisfaction in the smallest triumphs.
Even though this is a spoof on the horse world, there is a measure of truth in it. There are many girls of all ages who have their hearts set on horses. Each person deals with his or her own draw backs. Perhaps they’re not physically gifted. Maybe the horse they ride is really uncooperative. Maybe they have to struggle to get to lessons because “Daddy’s” too busy or not around. Maybe they can’t afford to ride enough to progress very quickly. Perhaps there is no place to learn. But whatever the obstacle, girls (and boys) all over the world yearn to ride horses and they surmount all sorts of obstacles to reach their goals.
These horse lovers form part of a gigantic group of people who are the foundation of the horse industry. Everyone starts from the same point. Everyone begins as a beginner. There’s no way around it. The greatest Olympians had to learn how to stop and start his horse, how to steer him around turns and corners, and how to keep balance on their backs. There just are no short cuts and no way to circumvent those first rides, first experiences and first baby steps.
Where would the horse industry be with out innumerable beginning horsemen and women? Obviously the business would wither away. After all, there would be no one to buy the helmets and boots, no one to purchase his first horse, or go to the first show. There would be no one to make progress to move up the levels. No one to eventually fill the shoes of the great horsemen as the greats become old and cease to ride.
The beginner, even the not so gifted ones, are the back bone of our industry. They keep the tack shop and feed store doors open. They enter en-mass in the lower levels of competition. They keep riding schools and camps in business. And as they move on in experience and skill to higher levels of achievement, new group of beginners takes their place.
No matter how silly or foppish the beginner may seem to be, it would do us all good to remember that we were once them. Perhaps we were not a carbon copy, but none the less, there were those early days when we were first putting our leg over a nice or perhaps not so nice horse or scruffy pony.
I love beginners. I love to see the great triumphs they have when they succeed at learning to post or when they are finally brave enough to stick their finger in a pony’s mouth for the bit. I love to see beginners over come their fears and difficulties and morph into into horsemen and women.
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