A dream given form

I've dreamed of horses since I was old enough to know what one is. The horse is the noblest creature on earth, making all others mundane.

1983. I remember it clearly. I was in the 7th grade, and a girl named Kasey brought an Arabian Horse World magazine to school and showed me. Up until that point I was horse crazy. Then I saw the horse on the cover of that magazine, his name was Sakr, and I fell for Arabians. Sakr was pure white, dressed in native costume, covered in tassels, galloping joyfully. Kasey let me keep the magazine and I still have it.

I started dreaming a much more specific dream. Not just any horse, an Arabian horse would be mine someday. A white one like Sakr, perhaps with a black mane and tail. I drew them all over my homework compulsively (I still do that, whenever I find paper and a pencil together).

It was total coincidence, a small feat for God, but in 1988 I found my first horse, my only horse, and he is a grandson of Sakr, and although he was dark when I got him, now he's white with a black mane: )

His name's Baasha al-Sherif, I've had him 20 years, and I call him my son. I love him more than any earthly thing. Maybe I dreamed him up, but when I put my nose in his mane, he's real.

Whenever I meet a horse-crazy little girl, if I see wistfulness in her eyes as she strokes Baasha's neck, I tell her, "If you really want a horse, you'll have one someday. You'll make it happen if you want one badly enough."

I cannot express what it's like to be horse crazy to someone who is not, sometimes I try to see a normal person's perspective - to see a horse as only a large magestic animal, as I would see an elk. But I'm infected with that illness that makes one crazy about horses, and they transcend all other creatures on earth. A whole 'nother class of animal that, when you have the opportunity to touch one, you would not wash your hands: ) These are creatures that somehow let us ride them, and when a relationship is developed with them, riding through the countryside becomes an adventure with shared intent. After 20 years, the relationship I share with Baasha is complete, comfortable, trusting. I love him irrationally. He's my dream, and he's real.