A Lifetime Love of All Thing Gypsy…
a Tribute of Sorts…(aka My First Gypsy)

Par­don the length, it’s my story and it just flows…just skip me if you don’t like long!

The back­story: I took my first, long-anticipated trip to the UK in 2000.  I never thought I’d ever make it there, thought this would be my once in a life­time trip.  Even bought an expen­sive HD cam­corder at the time and was called the mad pho­tog­ra­pher when I was there because I never stopped film­ing (12 hours worth), nor tak­ing pic­tures.  I wanted it all remem­bered.  I had done a giant web­site for the Roman­tic Times Con­ven­tion and Kathryn’s tours…

Now the real fun begins…I met Terry from the White Hart online when book­ing this quaint lit­tle hotel pub.  We talked all the time before going through­out the win­ter before.  He talked about his da and his buddy Rob (Wat­son) and his horses and the breed.  I metic­u­lously planned out this entire trip…we flew in to Man­ches­ter, dipped down to Chester real quick to replace a bracelet I had lost from my first trip from the Cathe­dral there…then drove up to Appleby.  Let me tell you, to return and drive some roads and visit places I had been before, not even real­iz­ing their sig­nif­i­cance was just pos­i­tively *eerie*.  We got in to Appleby on Thurs. We get there in the after­noon and for those that don’t go, A.) Thurs­day is when a lot of horse breeders/dealers pull in and a lot of the seri­ous deals are made for the cream of the crop before the crowd gets a hold of them — and then they are tucked/hidden away — and B.) in 2006 they were not as of yet really bus­ing in tourists — grrrrr — and doing any of the crazy sh*t they are doing now to try to con­trol the fair.  I regard it as the last great year and thank the stars we went that year as the last true hey­day of a good fair.  The Gyp­sies I know agree that that was one of the last hurrahs…great weather too…we got sun­burned on the bank.  It was no where near as overrun/crowded as now.  With that in mind, you can under­stand, I got a very good seri­ous edu­ca­tion about buy­ing, sell­ing, trad­ing, cus­toms, cul­ture and immersed myself right in to the breed and it’s history/culture/mystery.

So now you can under­stand the build up…Here I was, walk­ing among the beau­ties there and had never in my life seen so many iden­ti­cally gor­geous horses of one breed in one place.  It is so immensely dif­fer­ent than any­thing you will see here.  I don’t even have enough words for the expe­ri­ence.  I walked the park­way next to the river where all the mares and babies used to line up and I am not kid­ding you…I cried. I could barely breathe.  I’m choked up just think­ing of it.  It was like time stopped.  It was…for lack of bet­ter word: mag­i­cal. Cliché, yeah, I know.  I was obliv­i­ous to all that was around me, like in a movie where the sound, the noise, the voices just muf­fled out and all I could see where the horses…the love, the per­son­al­ity, the calm in every sin­gle mare stand­ing there just reached out and grabbed me. I’ve never felt what I felt ema­nat­ing from those horses in any barn, horse­show or trail ride I’ve ever been on (remind me to tell you about THAT ride in france one day lol).  The pic­tures we have from that first and sec­ond year are sim­ply stunning…we haven’t been able to cap­ture that since.  I stood there with this one mare — noth­ing spe­cial, noth­ing stun­ningly con­formed — but just hold­ing her head as she dozed on my should and I rubbed her face, ears, under jaw and leaned in and whis­pered to her…she whis­pered back, I swear. It was at the end of those 20 min­utes or so, that my life changed…

Ry finally got me to leave her…we walked up and down the river and my brain kicked in to a gear that ger­bils in a wheel only dream of.  My first silly thought (about run­ning away from it all here where my heart is) out­loud was to Ryan: ‘What would you do if I ran away with a Gypsy boy?’…he paused, his answer in a mop­ing voice ‘Call your parents…they’d help me bring you home’.  Min­utes pass…analyzing, weigh­ing the chess moves.…‘I think I might sell the Vette’.…dumbfounded silence ensues from Ryan.  He thought I was kid­ding. I would never ever utter those words, any one thought.  Over the course of Fri­day at the Faire, I ran all sce­nar­ios in my head and how this was going to work. I also ran the gamut of emo­tion from log­i­cal ass­es­ment, to excite­ment, to antic­i­pa­tion, to anx­i­ety, to over­whelmed depression…it was a roller coaster…In that one deci­sion, I just opened up a whole new world to myself full of a ridicu­lous amount of paths. On top of it all, I decided it must be a mare wor­thy of breed­ing if I am going to invest and do this, mean­ing I’m not get­ting my beloved boys. On Sat­ur­day at the fare, I viewed the mares with a whole new set of eyes.  I sharp­ened, honed in.  I lis­tened inten­tenly to the Gyp­sies as they struck their deals, what they said, what they were argu­ing over, what was sell­ing, what was cre­at­ing crowds, what they took behind car­a­vans to fin­ish the deal when it was a seri­ous push for a mare that *wasn’t* for sale, yet the new guy walked away with her.  I ques­tioned, I asked, I didn’t push them though. They didn’t ask if I was Amer­i­can, they didn’t care at the time. I fig­ured out what I liked, what I wanted to breed, what I respected, what I should be car­ry­ing on.  Iron­i­cally, I had met Robert Wat­son on the Hill and didn’t know who he was or that he was Terry’s friend.  I asked him about the mare he brought up from the field, grass stained (seri­ously) and all, with foal at her side, pulling out fairy braids in her hair.  I asked about sell­ing her and import­ing her.  I found out later, she sold for 40 thou­sand pounds.  Later, I told Terry about the mare, and when he found out it was Rob­bie, we met and talked that night in the pub.  We arranged to go out to his fields to see his horses first hand and , those that he doesn’t bring to the faire. The first field we went to, just the three of us, was a field full of yearlings…about 30 of them perhaps…the pic­tures we came home with were amazing…they trav­elled like a flock of birds as one. I *called* them too me in a moment that was sur­real, they came one by one fol­low­ing each other to me from about a foot­ball length away as I squat­ted in the field, hand out­stretched and *call­ing* to them with patience and love. They came, they sur­rounded me, they rubbed their noses on me gen­tly. Not a one of them was mean or aggres­sive or scared in any way.  I picked one or two I really liked…but I was wor­ried about import­ing a baby, unproven. I told him about this heavy heavy black mare that I saw, so off we went to see his breed­ing mares. I was still waf­fling between the tra­di­tional black and white, which seems like it’s a must have, and my love of the solids/blagdons.  The next field we walked in where his favorite mares.  The heavy, and I do mean heavy, black mare  he was talk­ing about foaled most likely a cou­ple of hours before we were there.  Amaz­ing. They still had rem­nants on them and the baby was test­ing his legs all around the munch­ing mare. I took sev­eral ana­lyt­i­cal pic­tures of the mares I liked…Robbie was a wealth of info about them.  It was…just amaz­ingly lucky to have any oppor­tu­nity like this. Even more ironic, was on just a ran­dom note of either being hit on by the guys there or talk­ing to them on pur­pose, I had met the Vines and the Coates (and actu­ally I think Brian Cash too, but not sure).

I couldn’t decide on a Cob and had to return first home to imme­di­ately put the Vette up for sale.  (The full impact of that didn’t hit until it left my dri­ve­way and I had a men­tal break­down of hys­ter­ics about an hour after…all I remem­ber is some­thing about becom­ing the ‘crazy cat lady’ and ‘what am I doing???’ on the phone with my mom).  In the mean­time, I began seri­ously research­ing what was already here in the United States.  I wanted some­thing imported from there. I set­tled on Bartko…started stum­bling across Sil­ver Dap­ples and at the time knew noth­ing about the rar­ity or such within this breed.  I just knew it was, well dif­fer­ent, and I like to be dif­fer­ent and it reminded me of my dream horses of carousels and if I was going to have all that hair and that beau­ti­fully thick body, why not it be a carousel horse?  I looked at 2 I found that were really, not good qual­ity in the body…I found an older mare I liked that I think was with Loretta, but that would mean import­ing.  I then found Celeste.  She had a filly she had Bartko bring over and was for sale.  Bingo. We struck up a deal, I gave her hold cash and we waited for my Vette to sell. 2 months later, Sor­cha was on her way home to me. I’ve never looked back since. I’ve regret­ted get­ting involved a time or two with reg­istries and pol­i­tics here, but I’ve never regret­ted these horses.  There is not another breed under the sun like them.  I pon­der if there ever will be.  There is not another cul­ture under this sun so dear to me either. And to come full swing in horses, trips to the UK and my past with Gyp­sies (peo­ple) before…still just makes me go ‘wow, there is such a thing as fate’ and signs to the path you should be.  It brings me to tears to close this and say, I will never ever give up my love of these horses or their his­tory, both good and bad (and we  do real­ize that within the romance, there is always bad things…there would not be a bal­ance to life it twere not that way). And every time I am dis­heart­ened by things within the breed, each year I’m in Eng­land breath­ing in a deep breathe of the life-giving oxy­gen that is the Gypsy Cob.  Each year, I cel­e­brate and remem­ber why *I* love this breed, the thoughts *I* had that first year, the emo­tional roller coaster of the true romance that was that first year and noth­ing will ever change that or take it away, though we may never re-live that type of time again.

With Gypsy Love, thank you for read­ing my story.

If you are interested in following more articles from A Repository of Thoughts, you can read more write ups and articles on my blog here: http://ratcatcreative.com/blog/category/tails-from-the-stall/