Horses are apparently in my blood.
My great-grandfather (my mother's father's father) was the caretaker for his cavalry units' horses in WWI. There is an old photograph floating around, though I have yet to see it, of him with said horses.
Then, on my mom's side of the family yet again, (this time on my mother's mother's side) they had a farm, which is still in operation today, where they once raised Belgian draft horses to be their "tractors" and plow the fields and stuff (they were very poor immigrants from Belgium and couldn't afford a real tractor so they had those big horses).
Onto my my mother, who grew up riding a horse of her own, a horse named Blue Boy. He wasn't any particular breed, essentially just mutt of a horse, but he was a good horse, although a very nervous one, and they learned how to ride together. Mom often rode bareback as there was only one saddle to be shared by her and her three sisters and their horses. Besides, the horses never really liked wearing the saddle she says. They would run in the other direction when the saddle came out.
There were three horses to be shared among Mom and her four sisters, mainly because the forth sister was born a little later than the first three, and money was kind of tight. One of them was an actual quarter horse, a bay named Sugar, who was ironically anything but sweet. She would balk and buck and bite all the time and try to get the rider off her back. She wasn't really wild, just a little resentful and untrained I believe. I think she was named that because she liked sugar cubes.
Me? I used to want to ride horses, and even did several times, but I am deathly afraid of falling in general so being in the saddle, off the ground like that, it makes me nervous. That and a horse is a lot of animal to handle IMO. I apparently didn't inherit the family horsemanship gene.