by Cassidy Nunn | photo by Nunn Other Photography –
“Well, the fruit sure doesn’t fall far from the tree now does it?” my Dad said on a recent FaceTime call as he watched his two-and-a-half-year-old granddaughter race around the living room collecting all her toy horses, assembling them in a line, proceeding to brush them vigorously and feeding each one a plastic carrot from her flattened palm while chanting “num num num.” She then sprinted over to her wooden rocking horse, climbed aboard and began to rock back and forth, taking quick breaks to pat the horse’s neck and checking back to the phone to see if her Opa and Oma were still watching. She snorted like a horse, grabbed a strand of hair on each side of her face and told us “these are my reins” before taking off at a gallop around the kitchen table, leaping over her carefully placed toys on the ground that were her jumps. “Have a good ride!” she squealed and proceeded to pat herself on the neck, whispering “good horsey” under her breath before charging around the living room, whinnying and snuffling every few strides. “It feels like I’m having déjà vu,” my Dad said with a laugh.
If you ask my mum, she can pin down the exact deciding moments where she knew she had a horse-crazy daughter. The first, she miraculously had her video camera out and was filming me as I sat in the TV room, eyes glued to the screen in rapt attention. Mum asked me what I was doing, to which I replied – gaze never leaving its mark – “mummy, one day I’m going to jump horses over fences too.” I’m sure in that moment she thought, meh, of course her three-and-a-half-year-old daughter was fixated on horses; so many little girls love ponies, and brushed it off as a fleeting fixation.
The second instance was perhaps harder to ignore. It happened shortly after the first, shall we call it, exposure, and involved a TV once again. But this time, it was a two-hour long film, The Black Stallion, which I sat through in its entirety without getting up once. And from that day forward, according to family lore, I was horse obsessed. My parents didn’t really know how to treat my infatuation as neither of them were horse lovers, we lived in the city with very few horses nearby, and they expected it was just a phase I’d soon grow out of. Well, 31-and-a-half years later the obsession has yet to wane and apparently, my daughter has also been bit by the horse crazy bug. Only it got to her even earlier: she was only 18 months old when suddenly she would constantly carry around her horse stuffed animals and horse books, ignoring all other toy options.
Could it be genetics? Environmental exposure? (My daughter has been around horses since she was a week old, after all, and is surrounded at home by my horse books and photos.) Or is it something else that causes this intense love for horses at such a young age? It’s an age-old question that there’s likely no true scientific answer for.
My husband and I ponder aloud whether we’re raising a daughter or a horse, as we sit around the dinner table and watch her consume her “hay” as she now calls any food that resembles said horse feed – in this case, grated cheddar cheese and linguini noodles. I can’t help but be excited that she so strongly shares my adoration for my favourite animal. I don’t know if it will last – the true test often comes if you get back on the horse after your first fall, and if you make it through the teenage years and still want to be involved with horses, but this week she vehemently told me “I don’t want to go home! I stay at the barn!” We’d already been there in the cold for an hour, cleaning my horse’s stall, brushing him and taking him for a walk. I was chilled and hungry, but she was adamant we stay longer. So, at least for now, it seems like her passion is here to stay and I’m enjoying every moment we can gallop around the house together, just a couple of horses out for a ride.
