I don’t remember the exact phrasing, but the gist will remain forever etched in my mind: “Get back on, do it again, and do it right!” There was also something about not crying. Or maybe that was just strongly implied.

I can’t pinpoint this as the exact moment I became a Horse Dad. After all, my then 5-year-old daughter Ada’s horse obsession dated back to age 2. We had read countless books about horses, some of them so many times they fell apart. 

But this was definitely the moment when things got real. Ada begged us for a long time—months, for sure, and probably years—to get her signed up for riding lessons. A series of phone calls netted me one trainer willing to take on someone that young. We were there to watch a lesson, to confirm (there was really no doubt) that she wanted to do this. 

We arrived a bit early, and went to the barn. It turned out that the trainer was still giving an earlier lesson, but we could go watch that, too, if we wanted. We did. A woman escorted us to the indoor—it was early March, and in Wisconsin that means you’re not riding outside. She yelled “door,” as we certainly would not have known to do, and we got the OK to go in.  

My memory tells me that the ride was already underway as we stepped inside, though that’s probably not quite right. But whether it was one second after we entered or 10 seconds after, the very first thing we saw—before we could get seated, before introductions, quite possibly even before the door was completely closed—was a girl come down a line of jumps and fall off. Hard. Directly in front of us.

I’m confident, looking back, that she stayed down long enough to follow all the necessary precautions. But to this newbie the reaction seemed instantaneous, and not what I expected. “Get back on, do it again, and do it right!” And cut it out with the crying.

I didn’t say anything, but I know what I was thinking. It started with “Holy” and ended with a bunch of exclamation points.

We watched the rest of that lesson, and all of the next. Understand that I spend my days teaching law, and so I inhabit a world not known for its embrace of softer teaching methods. Even so, “old school” was the description that kept coming to mind.

I wasn’t sure how Ada would react, but she was transfixed. At the end the trainer—a woman who would become a friend and a teacher of many valuable lessons over the next several years—asked one of the girls in the lesson to get off her horse. She invited Ada to come over. Soon enough Ada sat on the horse, riding around the ring by herself, proud as could be. (“He’s barely awake,” a nearby mom assured me.)

The hook was set. 

We’ve covered a lot of ground between that day almost a decade ago and my writing this. I’ve sat ringside for at least 500 hours of riding instruction, and for countless more hours of hacking. I’ve learned a lot, including that usually when you fall there are just two alternatives: It’s bad enough that we take you to the hospital, or you’re getting back on. Crying is, unfortunately, pretty much unavoidable. But it’s strongly discouraged. And when, as a friend puts it, you’re dealing with 1,200 pounds of instinct-driven animal, old school is the order of the day.

Meantime, the 5-year-old’s dreams of just taking a riding lesson have grown larger. “Maclay” is no longer just the last name of a guy I knew in law school. “Indoors” doesn’t just mean the place where you ride when it’s cold out. Whether we’ve got the budget to make all these bigger dreams come true remains to be seen, though I have my doubts. Meantime, we’ve gone from one ride a week to as many days as we can make it, from schooling shows at a local barn to the Kentucky Horse Park. Ada’s sisters, Audrey and Laura, have come along for the (yes) ride.

Partly because of my wife’s allergies, partly because embracing their children’s passion just seems like what parents ought to do, and partly because I find the whole thing strangely alluring, I have embraced the role of Horse Dad. I’m the one near (but not too near) the in-gate at shows, shifting positions from one round to the next till I’ve found the lucky spot. I’m the one mucking the stalls, taking out the braids, and holding the pony while she gets a bath. I’m the one who said “sure” when asked if he’d be interested in a spot on the board of the Wisconsin Hunter Jumper Association. 

The horse world has affected my professional life, too. I’ve learned a lot about teaching law from watching others teach riding. In the research side of my job I focus on judicial behavior and institutions, and I’ve started to examine some of the parallels between judging in law and what the philosophers of sport call “aesthetic sports” (which includes the hunters, equitation, and dressage). More about that a little ways down the road.

And did I mention that I’m not actually a rider myself?

It’s been a fascinating, fulfilling, and in no way inexpensive journey so far. I’m looking forward to sharing it with you. We’ll try to keep the crying to a minimum.

Chad Oldfather is the blogging COTH Horse Dad. He’s the non-horsey father of two junior hunter/jumper/equitation riders and he’s going to take readers along on his horse show-parenting journey. By day, he’s a law professor in Wisconsin, but on weekends and evenings, he can be found, laptop in hand, ringside at a lesson or show. Read his first blog, “My Soul For An Equitation Horse” to get to know him. 

Read all of Chad’s blogs for the Chronicle.