18 SIDELINES OCTOBER 2014
FOR HORSE PEOPLE • ABOUT HORSE PEOPLE
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By Kayla Jones
Stormy had the odds stacked up against him. Anyone could tell
from his ragged hair, barbed-wired scars and underweight body
that the dapple-grey Thoroughbred’s life had been difficult. The
tattoo under his lip branded him as an off-the-track racehorse,
and the few riders that had been on his back were thrown off and
disinterested in riding him again.
The only girl that did care, Ariel Levin, wasn’t allowed to have
a horse.
Ariel got hooked on riding at the age of 4
when her dad took her on a tourist trail ride
while on vacation in West Virginia. As soon
as they got back, her dad started looking
up places where she could take lessons,
and she began riding at a school lesson
barn in Orlando, Florida. That’s where she
came across Stormy.
“They put a girl on him to try him out,
and he took off,” Ariel said. “The next time
someone tried riding him, he took off and
threw the girl into a tree. That continued to
happen with anyone that tried to ride him.
Meanwhile, I was trying to clean him up.”
She worked with Stormy until she could
groom him on crossties. That’s when her
trainer finally allowed her to ride him. “I
knew what he did with some of the other
riders, but I wanted to take the chance
and ride him to get to know him better,”
Ariel said.
“
I rode him and jumped him
and everyone watched in disbelief that this
horse was acting like such an angel with
me and was so evil with anyone else who
got on his back.”
But all of Ariel’s hard work was about to
be for nothing. Her family was moving and so the barn wasn’t
going to keep Stormy. He was going back to his original owner.
Unfortunately, Ariel’s parents didn’t want to buy her a horse, so
Ariel spent days in Stormy’s stall — refusing to believe that the two
would be separated. She was determined that somehow Stormy
would move with them, and got on the phone with her father.
She explained what would happen to Stormy if they didn’t take
him, and finally handed the phone to her trainer as a last attempt.
“When they hung up, my trainer said, ‘Congratulations, you just
got your first horse!’” To this day, Ariel says she’s still shocked that
Ariel Levin and Stormy
Photo by Enrique Urdaneta
Stormy and Ariel — doing what they love to do!
