by Diane Starin
Diane Starin fell in love with horses when she was a little girl at a carnival. It was a love she didn't outgrow, despite the fact that her counselor called her desire to work with horses a pipe dream. Today she trains horses, teaches riding, and sharpens sheep shears to make ends meet. Here is her story.
Horses are interesting critters. They definitely have minds of their own. I have liked the animal since the time I was put on one at a carnival by my mother. I think it took her a couple hours to get me off. I hate to think how much that cost her. When I got to be about twelve years old, I decided that I had found the horse I had to have. The horse was starving and skinny. My mother was really afraid for me to own a horse and, yet, she wasn't one to hold me back from doing anything I wanted to do.
I think she figured this poor starving animal couldn't hurt me anyway. So the critter was purchased for fifty dollars. All kids like to race horses, and I was no exception. My horse turned into a fat, sleek, shiny runaway. When you grabbed a handful of mane and jumped on you needed to be ready to go, because he was a half mile down the road in about 30 seconds.
Later I purchased another neglected horse and raised her. She is fifteen years old now, and I still have her.
When I finished high school I decided to go to college and major in horse husbandry. My rehabilitation counselor said he knew a lot of blind people who had a lot of crazy pipe dreams and that I should figure out something that I could really do and get back to reality. I told him that it didn't really matter what he thought because I was going to go take that major anyway. He told me that if I did I wouldn't get any help from the state program for the blind. But I wasn't about to let the government run my life. So I applied for and won a scholarship from the National Federation of the Blind and one from Sierra College. I ended up with a degree in suburban agriculture and a certificate in horse husbandry.
While most people were running around getting readers, I was looking for trucks and horse trailers and such so that I could get to class. One of the classes was a hands-on horse training class. I had a horse trailer, and I met a friend who had a horse and a truck but no trailer. So between the two of us we had what we needed and off we went to class.
The instructor had definitely never seen a blind person before, not to mention having one in his horse training class. But he didn't seem particularly bothered about it. We agreed that we would figure out together how it could be done. I was lucky and pleased that he had that attitude.
At this point I was still a novice, and I did a lot of dumb things that you are not supposed to do with horses, but I learned. When you are training a young horse, you first do what is called ground work. The horse must be exercised and taught to obey before it is ready to be ridden. One of the things done in ground work is called lunging. It is done on a long line of about twenty feet, and you have the horse go around you in a circle. The arena had very, very soft footing, and it was difficult for me to hear the horse in the soft footing twenty feet away with all the other class members doing the same things with their horses.
I decided to take a leather thong with a little bell on it, like a sleigh bell or the kind you have on your Christmas tree, and tie one bell on a front leg and one on the opposite hind leg. Then, when I asked the horse to trot I could hear the second he started to do it. That was one of my alternative techniques for getting the horse to respond to me immediately. In horseback riding there is rarely anything that you ever do with the animal where you are not in contact with it. So for a blind person it is a much simpler task than it might seem because you either have contact directly through reins or through a rope, and you learn quickly what the horse is doing by what is coming to you through that rope or reins.
When you are riding it is something like typing. You are not supposed to look when you type. Likewise, when you ride a horse, and become more expert at it, you learn to feel your horse under you. This is not unique to blind people. All people who show and train horses don't need to look at the horse to know what it is doing. When I ride along I listen for the echoes from fences and posts in order to judge distance.
After I finished college, I bought a stallion and went into the breeding business. I didn't have any trouble developing techniques to use here either. I use sound a lot and believe me, when you are handling a stallion and someone is handling a mare, there is no trouble knowing where they are or which end you might be approaching.
I asked the California State Fair Manager about starting a therapeutic riding school on the fairgrounds. About a month later he called up and offered me a job managing the Sacramento Valley Polo Club. When I went down for my interview, the man who was the president of the club said that I had to demonstrate to him that I could clean a stall. This job didn't pay much, but I badly wanted that experience on my resume, so I took it. I thought it was interesting that he wanted to see if I could clean a stall, but it never occurred to him to ask me something important like how I would get the horses to the track a half a mile away. The track was a one mile, standard regulation race track, and I was to gallop the club's four horses three miles each and everyday to keep them in shape. I decided that after I had been galloping around this track three times that I might want to be able to find the gate and get off of there. The simplest thought that occurred to me was to leave a transistor radio playing at the gate post.
In addition to caring for the horses, I had to baby-sit the people who were members of the Polo Club. I'd saddle up for them and talk to them. I had to ride with the ones who didn't want to ride alone. By the way, when I finally quit the Polo Club I had ten horses under my care and I was still getting the same pay. But I got the experience on my resume.
I am currently giving horseback riding lessons in my local area. I will always have horses because they are my passion, but now I am moving into a new small business, which I operate out of my home. It is a clipper blade sharpening business. Sheep shearers use a lot of blades.
The way I got started into this was quite by accident. I had moved to a small town, and I needed to get my clipper blades sharpened. I asked the barber, and the dog groomer, and the beautician where do you send your clipper blades? They said, we either take them to Sacramento, or we mail them back east. I thought, that is ridiculous! It's a three-minute process. All I have to do is buy the machine. I could do it out of my home with no overhead, no inventory, and no extra utilities.
About that time I was listening to a local swap shop program and, low and behold a one-in-a-million chance there was a used clipper blade sharpening machine on swap shop. I called up the person in Sacramento who had sharpened my clipper blades for years. I said, "What kind of machine don't I want to buy? I don't know anything about them." He said, "If the wheel is fourteen inches across you are in business." Well, it was wider than that across, and I went down to the lady and bought it from her for half price.
She had only used it four times. She said that she couldn't make it work and that she would be my first customer if I could get it going. I found there wasn't much to it. You turn the machine on, and it spins the wheel at 700 rpms. After you powder and oil the wheel, you put the blade which you hold with a block of wood at a certain angle and go from edge to middle and back from middle to edge for five seconds and you are finished. So for three dollars for two minutes work, it's not a bad deal. I sharpen clipper blades for money so that I can train horses for love. It's a combination that works for me, and my blindness really has nothing to do with it.