Those who wait on the Lord shall renew their strength.
They will mount up with wings as eagles,
they will run and not be weary,
they will walk and not be faint. - Isaiah 40:31

Jerry and I started to go to the shows where Top Gun would be. He won every class Stan entered him in. He would sweep into the arena with fire and dignity and a rush of excitement. To say he was poetry in motion is not to do him justice. He was everything a stallion is supposed to be. People would gather back at the arena to watch when they knew Top Gun would be in a class. He was phenomenal and natural. An athlete even to an untrained eye. I have to admit, I knew nothing about showing gaited horses at this point. I was not impressed with the built up horses, their action looked stilted and totally unnatural to me....but Top Gun was flat shod and it looked like his feet barely touched the ground as he moved around the arena. I could not take my eyes off of him.

What a blessing that Stan called me first because there were many people at the time who would have jumped at the chance to buy him. I pulled Jerry to the car to go out to the barn with me....Jerry had already been to the shows with me, he knew the horse....what we didn't know at the time was the price.

When we got there, Stan got Top Gun out and rode him up and down the dirt aisle of the barn.....(something that only Walking Horse people do I've found)....As the horse warmed up, it seemed like a powerful motor just came on. You could feel the ground shake. You could hear him and feel him pass by you. I told Jerry we had to buy him. Jerry said "Mary Anne, I'm afraid that horse would kill you. He's too much horse for you." I replied, "Jerry just know I died with a smile on my face."

Stan told us the price and it was more than Jerry was prepared to pay for a horse that he thought would kill his wife. I pulled Jerry down the aisle of the barn where he began to tell me all the reasons that this was not a good idea. I ignored them all....and he said "You expect me to give Stan a check for this amount?".....and I who had never adamantly demanded anything in my life....said Yes and right now. Jerry pulled out his check book and wrote Stan a check for the deposit pending the outcome of having the horse checked out by a veterinarian.

Before we bought him, Stan actually let me get on him and take him up and down the aisle of the barn a few times. I grabbed mane and held on. I got off and my legs were jello I was shaking so hard. I had never ridden a horse like this....all I could do was hang on and try to remember what I knew (it didn't seem to apply at this point)...and listen to Stan as he loudly told me what I was doing wrong.

Those lessons continued with Stan teaching me to ride this horse that he had trained. At this point, this was Stan's horse. Stan knew him better than anybody and was the one that harnessed that power and turned it into the show horse that was Top Gun. It was not easy for me to learn. I was out of sinc with the racking gait. I couldn't find my center that I had been taught to use. The most confusing part was that Top Gun had been trained in the old Walking Horse tradition of the harder you hold them in the bridle, the faster and more animated they get. It was a complete reversal of everything I thought I knew about how to ride a horse. And Top Gun was trained to respond to a cluck from Stan....when he would hear that cluck he would take it up a notch. Most of the time, in those early days of learning to ride him, I felt like I was on a fire breathing horse out of a fairy tale....he did not seem real. I have never ridden a race horse, but I imagine it is a similar feeling. And sometimes, just for fun, when I was on Top Gun, Stan would cluck to him just to watch me have to grab main or be left hanging in the air with the horse gone out from under me. Boy were those fun days! I loved every minute of it. And Praise God I got the hang of it.