Later, however, we moved across the street from my husband’s parents’ estate in Riverside. Rent increased (we had not yet bought a house), we had a car payment, wanted a horse trailer, and became more mainstream consumers. My husband wanted to work for himself. My income was adequate, but a visit to my credit union presented an interesting consideration; we had no tax deductions. My husband was out of school, we didn’t have a mortgage. We did have plans to travel, needed new furniture, would have liked fancier accommodations for the horses, would have liked to go out to dinner more…the usual wish-list for those first years of marriage.
Anyway, one fateful day in 1972, I walked into my credit union, and Bob, the manager, was showing another man around. I had been a member since 1968, when I began teaching school, and Bob and I had discussed my financial goals on various occasions. I all but bumped into them, so Bob introduced me to his visitor, a gentleman interested in showing the credit union various ways to save its patrons’ money. I laughed and said he could start by showing me a way to save money on my taxes. On the spot, the visitor made an appointment to come to our home and do just that. Out of this came the riding school.
Our advisor said that if we started a riding school, we could deduct the horses and all related expenses from our taxes. Further, we would not even have to pay for a DBA ( a “doing business as” announcement) if we used our own name. We did have to file a business license. Done. “Gunther’s Equestrian Schooling” started, and Hashy became our first school horse. I had had to sell Merlin. I wanted a competition horse to jump, and Merlin, wonderful trail horse that he was, simply didn’t enjoy jumping, or getting on the bit, or other people riding him. I then found Benefactor (I name my horses with positive ideas in mind when I can…relates to next story), a huge 17.3 hand Quarter-draft cross. Thus started the riding school, and the tax deductions associated with it!
Hashy was perfect. Anyone could ride her as she adapted to her rider. She was slow and mellow for apprehensive children, fast and powerful if your seat was secure. She was a husky 16 hand half-Morgan, half-Quarter line back dun: yellow ochre with black points: black socks, ear tips, zebra striped legs. Her broad back was like a sofa, and she was smooth enough that any novice could ride her bareback. I used her for vaulting, and I have a picture of her in a 3-Day Event at Pebble Beach. Versatile really is an understatement.
Hashy was probably about ten years old in 1971. In all these years that have passed, no horse I’ve worked with was more suitable. Lucky for me! I had some three-line liability release for students and parents to sign, like “I do not hold Gunther’s Equestrian responsible for accidents” tacked onto the bottom of the sign-up form my students filled out. A far cry from the triplicate forms, insurance premiums, and notarized leases that came later.
Of course, the riding school didn’t just suddenly have students. I advertised in the local paper: “Highly qualified instructor (I really had been riding/taking lessons/competing since that epiphany when I was 7, and I WAS a certificated teacher…). Great school horses (well, one was… Bene was for more, um, advanced riders!). Local, Reasonable, and my phone number. Local meant that my neighbor was allowing me to use the vacant field next to our house. Reasonable was $5.00 per lesson, private or group. I didn’t actually have a group at first, but the school pretty much did advance at a slow, steady pace.
My first student! Hashy walked, trotted, cantered. The dressage arena consisted of rails on the ground. The nearby house of a friend of ours had recently burned down, and they were rebuilding. Their redwood rail fence did not go with the new house plans, so they had stacked it up for removal. Not a moment too soon, I asked if I could have the rails for my riding school. These were horse people. They said “Sure”. About 90 van trips later--we didn’t have a truck yet--I got all those rails to the field. They were sufficient to make a dotted line outline for my dressage arena. There were spares enough to make five or six cavaletti composed of rails and cinder blocks to vary the ringwork and introduce the idea of jumps. Hashy didn’t falter. She flexed into her corners. Her 10 and 20 meter circles were pretty good. Small children stayed perfectly balanced trotting cavaletti and looked darling.
Hashy was my dependable matron for years. When one of my new students showed me pictures of her previous vaulting competitions, a light went on. I really needed an activity that would engage more than the five-at-a-time students I allowed per class. Summer was coming, I needed an income to supplement summer school and I wanted to broaden my horizons. So, I checked out a book on vaulting from the library, photocopied the exercises, bought a used vaulting rig, then had one made, as well.
By this time, the riding school had become both a great tax write-off and a source of extra money for tack and riding school improvements. I practiced vaulting with Hashy myself. Someone held the longe line, and I practiced the five or six rudimentary school exercises. Vaulting instructors may read this with skepticism, but remember, I wasn’t going to competitions, and Hashy’s collected canter in a round pen or on the longe line was 100% consistent, slow, and balanced. I was aiming to improve student confidence. What better way than to have students run alongside a cantering horse, jump and haul themselves up, balance on a beautiful broad back, do a gymnastic figure or two, then jump or slide off the rear, with grace and success? I had both boys and girls: boys were desirable because their greater strength allowed for harder exercises, and they could balance the girls for multiple combinations. Hashy was the only horse I ever had that worked for this. We had a blast with “vaulting breaks” each summer for years.
Time passed. Hashy was the horse of choice not just for the school; my husband still used her for pack trips, mountain trail rides, and the occasional local hunter/jumper show. She competed with him in the 3-Day Event at Pebble Beach. Height wasn’t her forte, and her heavy musculature was at odds with the light horses and ponies in the hunter classes. 3-Day Eventing was my passion at that time, not hers, but she always got around with students, and she would place when another entry had a stop, or a rail down. She was not one to win on her dressage score!
As the years passed, we noticed a certain stiffness in her movements. X-rays revealed ringbone, not a death sentence, to be sure, but a condition to be treated with bute (basically aspirin for horses), yucca, and TLC. I became an authority on arthritic conditions and I realized that I was going to need another dependable school horse. I wanted another Hashy.
We tried to breed her. There was a gorgeous Palomino quarter horse stud called Peter Palleo in the area. No go. Hashy was getting old at this point, and wanted nothing to do with him. She became a pet. She saw the school go from a stable of one to a going concern of, probably, twenty school horses. The number wasn’t stable, because many of our boarders liked me to use their horses as school horses, so the number of horses available to me fluctuated from time to time; I did not own all the horses I used in the school. As we made improvements, added stalls, built the barn, Hashy always had the premier location, and there was never a doubt as to who was the Grande Dame. All these years later, I am fully aware of the influence this mare had on my life. She literally gave me the options that would guide the directions I went with the riding school. She taught me that horses have limits, too.
Hashy didn’t like cows. Period.