Thunderbird

2010 Friesian crossbred gelding 💜

By Achilles (Dana Yvette) out of Skye's the Limit

The spring after I turned thirteen was the longest of my entire life.

Skye, who was 22 at the time (though I didn't know this!), was copiously pregnant to a three-quarter-Friesian stallion we had for a while. I had been wanting a baby horse for my entire life, and my horse-obsessed preteen self couldn't wait one more second for my very own foal from my absolutely treasured mare to be born. The books all said 11 months, which is 333 days.

One day after the other ticked past. Skye got bigger and I got more and more bored without being able to careen around on my best friend. Minutes slid past like syrup, then days, and then weeks, and no foal came.

Thunder's paternal grandsire - Dana Yvette

He was imported from the Netherlands but died young and didn't leave a lot of progeny

I got to that point where I half stopped believing that my foal was ever, ever going to come. At 10pm on October 30th, 2010, I checked on old Skye and she looked the same as ever. Huge belly, no wax. There was a storm brewing in the east, silent flickers of lightning as I leaned on the old destrier in the moonlight.

At 5am the next day, an absolutely perfect storm-washed spring morning exactly 365 days into the pregnancy, my mom shook me awake with three words I can still hear echoing in my mind. "Skye has foaled!"

I flew out of bed, grabbed a dressing gown and some gumboots, ran through my mom's dairy cows and found him on the grass in the cow field: every dream I had ever had, made flesh.

I still don't think any foal was ever as perfect as that little bay colt. He had the biggest knees ever and a big white nose and a fat thunderbolt-shaped star. I'd already picked his name: Thunderbird. (He narrowly escaped being Soñador after the horse in Dreamer).

That was one of the best summers ever. I was back on old Skye, who never skipped a beat, just a few weeks after the little guy was born. We were back to galloping bareback in the veld - only now we had a teeny-tiny companion running alongside.

I loved that baby horse to pieces. He was two weeks old when he would give his tiny feet right into my hands when asked. He didn't have his teeth yet when he used to whinny when he saw me, in a tiny, high-pitched little voice. Some days we just sat in the field in the sunshine, with his little head in my lap, just being a kid and a horse in the wildly abundant African summer.

We caused plenty of trouble, too. Thunder was three months old when he broke the first of many, many fences - on New Year's Day. My dad and I spent the whole afternoon fixing it.

If waiting for Thunder to be born was intolerable, waiting for him to be old enough to ride was worse. At least my smitten eye was unaware of his yearling ugliness, which, in hindsight, was pretty bad, LOL.

I spent a lot of time with the little guy, especially taking him on long walkies in the veld. I wanted him to be good on rides alone and put a ton of effort into it. To this day, he is terrible on outrides by himself, go figure!

By the time he was about 20 months old, I couldn't stand it anymore. I started showing him the saddle and tiny bits of lungeing and one evening, while he was eating his dinner in the field, I stood on an upturned bucket and climbed on his back without even a halter. Obviously, he just went on eating his dinner.

Poor little fella

All of my terrifying horsemanship at the time is on display here 😳

I lunged him a little more when he turned two, and then a couple of weeks later, I got on his back. He turned his head to see what I was doing up there, cocked a foot, and went to sleep.

Our second ride ever

That first year, poor little two-year-old Thunder - the thought of his little joints kills me today, but at least I was puny - carried me on little rides in the veld just like his mama. We did a little schooling, which I found intolerable because he was the slowest. horse. ever. Still is, frankly, although these days he needs a spur tap to do a tempi change instead of another walk step.

Honestly, looking back at his early years, it's just so gloriously evident to me that any success we've ever had in the dressage ring has been nothing but perfect grace. There was no training program. He took his first step of lateral work when he was eight years old. He was backed when he was two. He spent his baby years in a Western saddle.

In fact, when I was sixteen or seventeen, I was going to make him my amazing reining horse. We were going to do bridleless freestyles like Stacy Westfall. I could practically hear Tim McGraw lustily bawling out "Live Like You Were Dyin'". He will still do a brave attempt at a sliding stop if asked nicely, and I still have to be careful in the turns on the haunches or he'll clumsily try to spin. 

I did teach him to go in a neck strap, though, something that still brings me huge pleasure today.

When Thunder was about five, and I was eighteen, I started my little riding school. He was accordingly pressed into service, and some of my most loyal students remember their very first lessons on his patient back. 

He still fills in at pony camp quite often, and actually his first show was under a student - in showjumping. He even did a SANESA season of equitation and low-level dressage with a kid who later became a stable manager herself.

In 2017, when he was seven, I finally took him over myself again. I'd just spent a year struggling to put Arwen together at Elementary, and I was shocked to find how intensely rideable Thunder felt. He had matured a huge amount in the two years since his Western days - and even in my uneducated hands, he stepped into self-carriage all on his own. He felt supple and loose and just... perfect.

The year that followed was so exciting. I was still deeply uneducated as a rider, with nasty fiddly hands and no concept of bend or straightness, but Thunder basically carried himself and had perfectly obedient transitions. What was more, I finally had a real 20x60m dressage arena to ride in, so my figures were accurate at last. Prelim was easy. It was more than that: it was joyous. 

After years of struggling on Arwen, through absolutely no fault of hers, having actual competitive success was wildly exciting. Thunder scored my first 70%, following it up rapidly with another. We won some ribbons on the local circuit and, far more crucially, with every show we grew closer to each other. Our confidence grew together, and he picked up the tattered ribbons of my equestrian dreams and began to hand them back. I'm still a long way from actually being any good at it, but it was on Thunder that I felt for the first time as though I could have a real future in dressage. As though the higher levels, albeit a long way away, weren't something that only happened to other people.

The adorable foal had become my treasured partner in the dance.

At the end of a great 2017, we rode our first Novice tests. Thunder was perfect and reliable because he always is. I plopped around with my wiggly hands and kicky feet, the counter canter bent the wrong way and his quarters to the inside.

After my test, a stranger approached me. "Who coaches you?" he asked. 

Rather pleased with myself after what I thought was a nice test, I said, "No one." 

The stranger said, "Clearly."

Apparently my dressage was so poor that this person considered it a service to mankind, and that was how Grand Prix dressage rider and trainer, who we'll call Coach J, agreed to coach my questionable self on my mongrel hony for free at the local Friesian stud - "As long as you do your homework." 

In this simple act of kindness, Coach J catapulted me into a whole new world of riding. He opened doors for me that I had no idea even existed. And even though those first few lessons were the hardest I've ever had, shattering the Dunning-Kruger effect I was suffering from and involving more than one quiet cry in the tack room afterwards, it is not unfair to say that my riding was revolutionized in a matter of months.

I had hoped to learn better simple changes. By February 2018, Thunder had the flying changes. By May, Coach J could do three- and four-tempis on him, although that would take me many more years to do myself. 

This is why I can take absolutely no credit for any success my riding ever attains. I would never even have tried without the help of many very kind horses and people.

One more gift that I was given indirectly through this new training program is perhaps the most precious of them all. Lacking a chauffeur to my lessons since my dad was at work on lesson days, my mom approached a friend, who approached her son. This kind soul thought nothing of spending his Monday mornings driving some chick and her horse across town to ride endless circles in the sand. I mean, what more could a horsy girl ask for? We were wildly in love by February.

He also listens to me rant when the test was no good

We spent most of 2018 doing little other than taking lessons. There was such an overwhelming amount to learn, and still is. Coach J dismantled everything I had taught myself. At first, nothing felt right; but little by little, things began to get better. 

At the end of 2018, Thunder did his first Elementary test. We scored in the high 60s, and it remains one of my favourite memories ever.

We also did a show hunter class in which he displayed his total lack of a gallop

In fact, we didn't compete much until the end of 2019, which was a difficult and formative year for me. I was finding my feet in the world of adulthood, scraping together a new career in ghostwriting, trying to keep the stableyard from going bankrupt, and moving into my perfect tiny house on a hilltop. Financially, there was no way in the world I could compete, and I grappled with giving up on dressage as a career entirely. But I couldn't stop practicing, even if it was only at home - and the whole reason for that was that perfect bay gelding.

No matter how tired, burned out, or hopeless I felt, he was there for me - the same good, steady horse whether I rode him five days a week or had to give him a week or two off thanks to work pressure. Even when I drowned in the guilt of not giving him the attention I wished I could, he continued to give me everything he had, every single ride. He continued to be an anchor. He continued to be what he has always been: my beautiful big friend, with his gentle spirit and his courageous heart, and it was in large part thanks to him that I decided that I wouldn't give up on dressage even if we danced for Heaven's eyes alone.

I never had to prove anything to Thunder; he was the same good horse no matter what baggage I brought to each ride, and he helped me to realise that I had nothing to prove to anyone else, either. And so, when 2020 brought new opportunities with a global pandemic, we came out of that with a better bond than ever before.

2020 brought with it a global pandemic - and also an opportunity that caught me completely off guard. I had resigned myself to living the ammy life and running my tiny yard just to feed my horses when the owners of the aforementioned local Friesian stud called me up. They needed a new rider, and apparently Coach J had recommended me.

And just like that, my dreams came true.

Riding these top-quality animals brought with it so many benefits in every possible way, especially in dressage. I became so much stronger physically, get loads more coaching, and now have access to outstanding horses. I actually don't have words for how overjoyed I am to be here or how humbled by human generosity and, most importantly, God's unbelievable grace. And I'm also aware that if my sweet little bay horse hadn't caught Coach J's eye at that show, this might never have happened. 

Thunder and I began to go from strength to strength. In December 2020, we made our Elementary-Medium debut.

God willing, it won't be long before we get points for Medium. We've even started playing with the Advanced work at home.

Thunder is a pleasure in every way. Showing him is just glorious; he's absolutely reliable, totally relaxed and just so much fun. We have a harmony that I've never felt before, a quiet love between us in and out of the show ring that takes my breath away. He's the most stoic, tolerant, and generous horse I've ever known, and I'm far beyond honoured to have him in my life.

Our story has been and continues to be a story of redemptive, extravagant grace. We really shouldn't be here, by all accounts. It just shouldn't be possible. But our God is the God of the impossible.

And every step we take together tastes just like a miracle.