being a horse girl without a horse

I’m like deathly allergic to horses.

When I was younger, I begged and begged my parents to let me take riding lessons. They were a teensy bit overprotective and worried I’d get trampled (which looking back, was honestly a pretty reasonable concern, I was an incredibly clumsy child).

Eventually though all that begging paid off and my mom took me to a local pony ranch. I was ecstatic. 

Unfortunately it took approximately five minutes before I started sneezing. Then wheezing. Then slowly suffocating. Was it the hay? The horses?  Not sure, but I've never went riding ever again.

Naturally, I compensated for this cruel twist of fate by becoming completely obsessed with horse media.

Horse movies. Horse books. Horse comics. Horse games. Horse magazines. If there was a horse on the cover, I probably wanted it. I was trying my best to retain the essence of being a horse girl through media consumption.

So here’s some of the horse media from my childhood that I still remember vividly:

1. Bella Sara 

This was genuinely my favorite horse themed franchise growing up, and I honestly don’t think there are words accurate enough to properly encapsulate what bella sara was to me.

It was a trading card game, an online browser game, there were comics, books, movies, nintendo games, music videos… 

It was a massive sparkly magical horse universe.

Bella Sara was created by Gitte Odder Brændgaard, a danish social worker whose work included helping children with disabilities. The whole origin story of bella sara is genuinely fascinating and probably deserves a dedicated post of its own.

2. Howrse

For some reason, I never really got into star stable online. Instead, I played howrse. I genuinely have no idea why I decided to dedicate so much of my time to this game. Unlike SSO, it was pretty uneventful visually, the horses were basically just static images, and there wasn’t really that much going on.

The community was kind of amazing though and the breeding system and competitions were surprisingly realistic. I remember getting way more invested in breeding the perfect horses than I probably had any right to.

Unfortunately, my old account was deleted because of inactivity but the last time I checked the game was still going strong.

3. Other horse media:

More notable horse media are: 

my riding stables, life with horses/ hřebčín u bílého potoka (2008) - a genuienly terrifying game about taking care of a run down ranch, it was so empty and the soundtrack was harrowing. It had czech dubbing though so that was a positive for my 11 year old self who couldnt speak english.

lissy- a czech magazine about horses for girls. There was also a subscription box version, which my parents unfortunately never allowed me to get :(

my little pony -  its a given that this classic franchise would make the list. I grew up with G3 and G4 started airing in czechia when I was in middle school. Of course I watched it, though. I still do today...

I love reminiscing about old horse media. Although I will probably never be able to ride a horse, I am spiritually a horsegirl at heart.

- Tess