Sometimes owning a horse of my own seemed to me like it was only going to happen when I had saved up and bought one myself, but that did not stop me from continuing to try and get one, no way! My schools activities week list soon came around and I saw on the list that they had a week at the riding school that I went to, I was so there!

Now take in mind that when I read about it I was so excited that I failed to read the whole thing well, not properly anyway. All my friends were just as  excited and because there were only a few  places it seemed to take forever for the letters to come back to say whether we had places or not. Well we all got in, how good was that, now we only had to wait six weeks till the end of term.

Activities week had arrived. On the Monday morning I got up nice and early to make sure that I had everything, I had my jeans, jumper, waterproof coat, packed lunch, and yes my wellingtons, well I have had a few lessons now and some of the things that I had been told had actually started to sink in.

We were standing in the stable yard at the riding school, there must have been twenty of us and all of us talking at the same time. Looking back now, if I had worked at the stable I would have run away like the wind that day instead of having to put up with all of us.

We were all given the name of the horse that we would be looking after for the whole week. Mine was called Andy and I could not wait to go and meet him, but before we were allowed to go and see our horses all of us were given this huge folder with our names on, and inside there was a rota to say what we would be doing throughout the day, I started to study mine, muck out and groom? Hang on a minute, I thought, when do we get to ride.

Looking over at my best friend Donna she looked as confused as me, well that made two of us that did not read it properly the first time. Now as we both stood there reading we realized that this week was all about looking after horses with a hour riding a day, that meant the other seven hours we would be working, oh well, how hard can that be.

Well I soon found out how hard. First of all we had to muck out the stables, that took us all until lunch time, and then as we walked back across the yard I realized that I could not stand up straight, my back ached so much. We sat in one of the paddocks and ate our lunch, we were all very quiet and every now and again one of us shouted out in pain as we moved the wrong way, how were we going to get through the week?

After lunch we were told that it was time for our riding lesson, great, the bit we had been all waiting for. We were told to go and get our horses and then we would be shown how to tack up. There was no way that any one of us could lift up our horse saddles so the helpers had to do it all for us, then one by one we were helped on and led to the arena.

After about fifteen minutes we were all moaning, but they kept us out there for the whole hour. My arms and legs did not feel like they were my own, and this time as I dismounted I felt my legs quiver and then give way, as I looked around in embarrassment I realized that I was not the only one. We led the horses back to the horse stables and untacked them, then we rubbed the horses down, as my horse was digging into his food I stood there aching from my head down to my toes, and I wondered how I was going to get through all of this.

Walking across the horse yard I could see my dad sat in the car, as soon as I opened the car door I burst into tears. I could not wait to get home so I could go to bed. For a long time after this owning a horse was something that I thought I could do without.

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