Poor Decisions

“I already own one horse. A chestnut thoroughbred  mare. She’s 4 but mentally only 2 or 3. Super right-brained. She freaks out when she doesn’t understand. She’s afraid of her own shadow. I’ve poured a ton of money into her to see if her behavior is pain related. It’s getting better, but it will be a while before we are ready to head down centerline.

I tend to miss out on so much fun stuff at our barn because of my mare’s immaturity and it makes me sad. Last summer I started working with a rescue to find another horse who could trail ride and handle light arena work. There was one that I was really interested in but radiographs showed she had foundered so I passed.

A few months later the director of the rescue called me and said they’d got a thoroughbred in that he thought would be a great match. I really was not excited at the prospect of another TB but I went out to have a look anyway.

The literal moment my hand closed on his lead rope I knew he was mine. It was that shock of electricity you hear about in cheesy romance novels. He’d not been handled  in a while and you could tell, but he willingly did every little thing I asked of him.

The story we got on him made me unreasonably angry in that same romance novel way. He’d raced for a couple of years and had 14 starts before a DNF on his last race for undisclosed reasons. It appeared that he went straight from the track to the owner he was seized from, and that person proceeded to keep him in his barn with little water or food, no turn out, and no vet or farrier care for three years! When he was finally turned over to the rescue he was underweight, overly food aggressive, had severely overgrown feet, and a halter that was embedded into his head. 

On paper – even as I write this out – this was not in any way the horse I was looking for. But I took him in regardless. 

He spent a year rehabbing at a good friend’s farm and blossomed as the weeks went by. It was not a cheap or quick process. I was now financing two horses and  was still missing out on all the fun things I had wanted to do.

But what’s funny is that while I was wrapped up in rehabbing the gelding, my mare began maturing too. It’s like the pressure was off of her and she was now allowed to grow at her own rate.

I am not a religious person but I do believe that fate exists. I think I was meant to have this horse, at this time in our lives, and that I was able to have success with him due to all of the challenges my mare put me through. And I also believe that when the fun times come I’ll appreciate them more than I would have had this journey been easy.”