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This story was
written by a 16 year old club member, Leah Grisham. In 2012 she
suffered through the loss of her beloved horse Continental Zip, her
grandmother and her grandfather. As a senior at Glendora High
School, she is a gifted student and is taking an advanced placement
English Literature class. Shortly after the loss of her horse,
the teacher gave the class a prompt for a short story. Students
were to write about what you believe in. They were told to write
about anything they wanted, as long as it was something they "believed
in". Here is what she wrote. |
This I Believe
By Leah Grisham
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I
believe in my horse. Simple as that.
I believe I learned everything I needed to know about how to live
the good life
from this amazing pet of mine.
Zippie. While
most parents buy their kid a dog
to teach them responsibility, or at least that’s what conventional
wisdom says,
I was given Zippie. But the thing is he didn’t teach me responsibility,
he
taught me much more, not just how to clean stalls and tack and how to
get dirty
and win and lose, the thing is though, he taught me more things than
any human
I’ve ever met. Zippie was amazingly innocent and irresponsible- never
worked a
day, never earned a dime, never took a test or went to school. I so
wanted to
live the good life that Zippie led. Every day for the eight years that
I owned
him I went to the barn and rode or got him out, and if it was raining,
I would
find something to do. The thing is, Zippie taught me both literally and
metamorphicly how to fall off. I have taken my share of face plants to
the
ground from six feet above while on a 1,000 lb animal running at full
speed,
but one of the biggest rules in horses is that if you fall off, you
have to get
back on. So I did. I was blessed that Zippie was so kind and patient to
let me
sit on his back every day and ride him till he practically stopped. I
also
believed that Zippie could do anything, and he pretty much could. Him and I
traveled all over America competing and I always wondered why the hell
he would
put up with an annoying little kid on his back telling him to go and
work after
he had been just in a trailer for three days straight on his way to a
horse
show. He taught me patience, not because he was patient, but because I
had to
be patient with him, all he ever wanted to do was eat. Sadly,
everything has to
come to an end. My amazing horse had to be put down a few months ago,
and if
you really want to know, I cried when I wrote this. As childish as it
may seem,
He taught me just about everything I know and I will never stop
believing in
him.
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High Desert Pinto Association
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