Grey Horses

As some of you know, or maybe all of you if I don't have any readers who don't know me personally, I make my meager living as an Equine Sanitation Engineer. Yeah that's right. I made up a fancy title for 'sh*t shoveler'. For the past 6 years I have been employed at Boots and Saddle Riding Club in the Lehigh Valley. As glamorous and mentally challenging as my job is (not), I usually have a good deal of time to contemplate things. Most of my blog posts are written in my head as I clean stalls. Today, of course, is no different.

When I was first a horse crazy child and pre-teen, my dream horse was a grey Arabian mare. That's what I wanted. Nothing else would suffice. Nowadays, I know better. Arabians are not my cup of tea. Neither are mares. And grey horses in general? All they are is a pain in the butt to keep clean and the reason for the purple hand/fingernail look on show days.

I have to admit, in my slightly obsessive search for that costs next to nothing, diamond in the rough, those darn grey horses still seem to catch my attention more than any other. I think it's the fact that grey horses, which always end up as white horses, are portrayed as being magical.

Pegasus was white.
Unicorns are white. Shadowfax from the Lord of the Rings is white (lol!).
My favorite movie growing up was The Last Unicorn. It was a late 70s, early 80s, cartoon about a unicorn trying to find out what happened to all the other unicorns. I'm pretty sure I borrowed it from the public library so many times they eventually gave it to me. The original version had some cursing in it. My new DVD copy has been changed so it's suitable as a G rated movie. Darn. Maybe that is the basis of my love for grey horses.
Over the years I haven't actually ridden or even worked with many grey horses. Dusty is a palomino and Theo, a chestnut. Now all of a sudden I have access to two. Pepper the hony and Maija, who I'll post more on later today or tomorrow. Seems like I've finally gotten my childhood dream. Pepper is possibly part Arabian and both are mares. Maybe I should just start eventing grey horses only. Seems like it worked for Becky Holder and Michael Pollard. ;)