Skye's the Limit

1988 crossbred mare, right from Heaven's hands to mine 💜

I was just seven and growing up on the same farm where I now live and run Morning Star Stables when my parents decided that a horse would be just the thing. They were 100% right.

Skye came into my life as a sixteen-year-old mare with some fear issues, which I didn't understand. All I knew was that my brand-new pony, my beautiful golden pony with flowing silver mane and a perfect round star on her forehead, didn't come running to me through green fields like I'd imagined. Instead, she ran away at the very sight of me. She was the first horse I cried tears of disappointment and frustration over - and she won't be the last.

Perhaps this nervous mare and this little kid, in any horseman's eyes, were not exactly a match made in Heaven. But looking back, I can tell you that a match made in Heaven was exactly what it was.

It was a long journey for seven-year-old me, but eventually, with the use of two simple tricks that are still in my toolbox seventeen years later - time and treats - we came to an understanding. And ever since that day, we became absolutely inseparable.

She is the one who bought me so many things: my first ride bareback, my first canter, my first little jump, my first outride solo, my first time galloping across the veld with reckless abandon, and in 2010, my first little foal, Thunderbird, who dances for me in the mid-levels today. It was one hot summer on Skye that I taught myself how to sit the trot, bareback in the veld. If any single horse can be credited with the Velcro still firmly attached to my backside, it's her. And if any single horse can be credited with the sheer joy I still find in the rhythm of a horse's feet, it's her.

More than that, Skye was instrumental in my journey with the Lord. When she fell sick during the devastating African Horse Sickness epidemic in 2011, it was the first time in my young life that I truly felt absolute helplessness. The miracle of her recovery from this appalling disease was magnificent, but great work was done in my heart at that time, too. It is always in the deepest darkness that we meet the only real Light. So began the real journey of my walk with Jesus, all through the use of a brave old mare.

Skye and I never actually competed together beyond the local gymkhana, but we had so many vivid and wonderful adventures together in the field. As I headed into my late teens and she into her mid twenties, however, the old warhorse began to slow down a little. Her questionable conformation and complete lack of classical training eventually caught up to her, and an intermittent stiff lameness in her right knee plagued her more and more. Our rides went from reckless adventures in the veld to slow jaunts around the fields. She was not on board with walking only - with all the bucking, plunging, jogging and rearing to show for it - and when she started getting sore after our little rides, I decided to give her the grace of full retirement.

Skye is now in her mid-thirties and still a happy old firecracker who spends her days hanging out in vast green fields and getting whatever she wants. She has been retired for many years and deserves all of them, and all the years that are still to come. The old knee is a little stiffer these days, and in winter she has to be fed soaked hay and soupy chaff because the old teeth aren't up to much anymore, but it is my honour now to look after the old lady the way she looked after me when I was just a little kid on the precipice of a world that brings me so much joy.

I will forever be grateful for the mighty works of mercy and grace that God has done through this brave old battle queen. She is the only horse I was never afraid on, my heart horse for all time, even though she never could do a stitch of dressage or even canter on both leads.

And I pray there will be many more years of eating carrots and dozing in the sunshine for the best, bravest, most trustworthy horse in the length and breadth of this earth.