Mistakes I Have Made

                                                by Laura Crum

            So last post I wrote about judging another horse person’s action as a wrong action. And that is exactly how I feel about it. But I have also made some bad mistakes. Today I’ll tell you a true story about a time I really failed to do the right thing. And it haunts me.

            About fifteen years ago, my husband had a co-worker who was looking for a gentle horse for himself and his kids. Said co-worker had just bought a country place with a horse set-up. He was no horseman, but he’d been raised with horses and he wanted his kids to have that experience. At the same time my horseshoer was looking for a home for his gentle, still sound, older rope horse who was a good trail horse and fine for beginners, and twenty years old. I got the two people together and the old horse (Latch) was bought for the sum of $1000.

            Latch lived at his new home for about five years and taught the kids to ride. The dad took him for trail rides. Latch never did one thing wrong. But eventually the kids were no longer interested in horses and the family was moving. The co-worker asked my husband if I would find a new home for Latch, who was now 25, but still sound. He was willing to give the horse to a good home.

            Latch’s previous owner had moved to town and could not take the horse back. I had a nursing baby and wasn’t interacting in the horse world to speak of. I asked a friend, a young man I’ll call T, who did quite a bit of buying and selling and training, if he could find a good home for a free horse. I explained exactly what the horse was, said that no money was to change hands, and it had to be a good forever home. I said to T, “You’ll be doing the right client a huge favor—this horse is a real babysitter and still sound. And you’ll be doing the horse a favor, too. Remember, no money changes hands and the new owner has to keep him and put him down when it’s time.”

            T said he understood, and I made arrangements for T to pick up Latch. A month or so later T told me that he had found the horse a good home with a roper who wanted his very timid five-year-old to have a safe horse to ride. It sounded good. And there folks, I screwed up. I never looked into it further.

            I was a new mom, I was overwhelmed, still trying to keep up with my career writing a  mystery novel every year or so and raising my baby. Yes, I had excuses. I thought I had taken care of finding Latch a good home through T. But it turns out that I hadn’t.

            Maybe a year later T mentioned casually that Latch had been sold. “Sold,” I said. “He wasn’t supposed to be sold.”

            T gave me a look that I didn’t quite understand and shrugged.

            I then asked a few other ropers who it was that T had given the horse to. One of them gave me a straight look. “To R—he’s a horse trader. I don’t think he’d really fit anybody’s definition of a good home.”

            Of course, I went back to T and demanded an explanation, but T wasn’t talking to me.

            Eventually I pieced the story together. T had SOLD the horse to R for $1500 and pocketed the money, rather than giving Latch away with the stipulation he couldn’t be sold. R was indeed a roper, also a horse trader. The only true part of T’s story was that R had a timid 5 year old daughter and wanted a gentle horse. But within a year the daughter was confident enough (due to Latch) to move on to other horses, and R got rid of Latch.

            I was able to contact the woman who took Latch off R’s hands. She was a horse trader, too, and a friend of R’s. She said the then 26 year old Latch was thin and sick with pigeon fever. She took the horse, doctored him and fed him up until he looked OK. She then traded him to a woman who had a five acre property. That woman had just lost one of her two old horses and wanted a companion horse for the other one—she wanted to find an old horse that was gentle and sound enough to ride at the walk around her property. She swapped the lady horse trader a purebred Aussie puppy that she had raised for Latch.

            Well, it sounded good, but the horse trader could not remember the new owner’s name or address, and though I tried and tried, I could not track Latch down. It made me wonder if the story was bullshit and Latch had ended up at the sale. I was furious at T and told him so (in front of a group of other people). He had not only lied to me, and done a huge disservice to the poor horse, but he had totally screwed the previous owner, who gave the horse away in the hopes he could find a good home. If anybody should have had the money for selling Latch, it was the owner. T behaved in a totally dishonest and despicable way—though not untypical of a horse trader, sadly.  But the person who really was to blame for this mess was me.

            I was the one that my husband’s co-worker trusted to find a good home for the old horse. That man was trying to do the right thing. He wasn’t trying to get his $1000 back out of the horse, he just wanted Latch to have a good home.

            That was all I wanted, too, but I made the mistake of trusting T, who was a friend of mine. I simply did not realize that T would see a chance to make money on this horse and take it, rationalizing to himself that he had gotten Latch a good home, just as he was supposed to do.

            I should have checked, I should have asked a few people about R as a “good home” (if I had asked I would have been told that R did NOT qualify as a good home), the truth is I should have placed Latch myself. Though I tried and tried I was never able to find out what happened to Latch. I’d like to believe he did get a good home in the end, but I know it’s perfectly possible he ended up at the sale.

            The worst part is that this was a genuinely nice old horse. If I’d been thinking straight, I would have taken him myself, knowing that Latch could teach my child to ride. But no, I was tired and not riding my own horses and the last thing I thought I needed at that point was another horse.

            But I’m very, very sorry I dropped the ball on this. It really does haunt me to this day. The next two horses I found homes for, I made sure to do it myself and the horses got a great home. But Latch…poor Latch suffered because I didn’t do for him what I should have done. I can only hope it ended well for him. But I’ll never know.

Mistakes I Have Made

by Laura Crum

I posted a blog last month titled “Pitfalls”. In it I detailed the rather bad decisions a person new to horses has made when it came to buying a horse for her family. This got me thinking about the bad decisions I myself have made when I was new to owning horses. And that got me thinking about Honey.

Honey was the second horse I ever owned. I did not do a spectacular job picking out the first one, either, though I give myself a break on that—I was only fifteen at the time. My experienced uncle, my trusted advisor, selected my first horse, a somewhat cross grained gelding named Jackson. Jackson seemed an appropriate choice—he was fifteen years old when I bought him and appeared sound and gentle. Well, it turned out he was sound, but he wasn’t all that gentle. Jackson was prone to vertical rears when under pressure and to kicking out hard. He kicked me in the head once and laid me out cold. In short, he was not my dream horse.

Still, I rode Jackson and learned to deal with him. If only asked to walk, trot, lope in an arena, he was pretty much an easy ride. Two years later, when he and I were both seventeen, I sold him to the riding school where I learned to ride. (And yes, I checked on this horse—he was a success at the riding school and remained a well loved lesson horse until, several years later, he was kicked by another horse and had to be euthanised, due to a broken leg.)

Now, by the time I sold Jackson, I had helped my uncle break and train several colts, and I wanted to buy a young horse I could break and train myself. I shopped around a bit, and, as an eighteen year old, I bought an unbroken four year old mare named Honey. Honey had excellent cowhorse bloodlines (she was an own daughter of Leo Bingo) and she was a good looking sixteen hand bay mare. She belonged to an older lady who had raised her from a foal and simply let the mare run loose in the pasture. So Honey wasn’t really spoiled. But she was a hot-blooded four-year-old who had virtually never been handled.

Was this a good choice for an eighteen year old who had never broke and trained a horse single-handedly? Not so much. But my uncle liked this big good looking mare, and so I bought her.

Long story short—I got Honey broke. She didn’t hurt me; I didn’t hurt her. She developed a bad vice along the way—when she didn’t want to do something she backed up. Relentlessly. I couldn’t cure her of this and my uncle eventually took over and backed the mare until she fell down, then asked her to take a step forward. He had to go round and round with her awhile—I had her thoroughly confirmed in this vice—but eventually Honey could be talked out of backing as an evasion.

I took Honey off to college with me, intending to ride her every day. But I didn’t. There were too many other things to do, and I never really trusted Honey. I could walk, trot, lope her, take both leads, ride down the road, but she always felt resistant. I didn’t enjoy her. When winter break came around, I took her home and asked my uncle to sell her for me.

I heard she went to be a broodmare, but I never checked on her.

To me, in retrospect, this is a sad story. My intentions were good, and had I gotten some good advice, I probably could have been steered to a project horse that I might have enjoyed much more. I certainly would advise an eighteen year old girl with the experience I had at the time to go for perhaps a greenbroke horse of an obviously cooperative disposition. Not a hot, completely untouched four year old mare.

I did not ruin Honey, I don’t think, but I didn’t do her any favors either. I wanted to love her and keep her forever (that was my idealistic vision when I bought her), but I found her frustrating and sold her a year later. Not the happiest horse story in the world.

This “mistake” did not turn me off to horses. After Honey was sold I bought a little green broke four year old gelding named Hobby (another story), that I did manage to train such that he became a successful showhorse for the people who bought him from me a year later. Because, once again, Hobby and I were not a good personality fit. This story has a happy ending, because the people who bought Hobby kept him until he was a very old horse, loved him dearly, and euthanised him when his time was done. However, at the time I was just disappointed that yet another horse had not worked out for me. And then I bought Burt, a five year old with only thirty days of riding, whom I kept until his death in his late thirties. Burt was my first forever horse.

After Burt I bought two more horses that did not work out for me and that I subsequently sold. So I was in my mid-twenties when, with the purchase of Gunner, I began to be able to conciously choose horses that would work for me.

Thus, when I write about other people’s mistakes, I always try to remember that I made plenty of mistakes myself. I chose horses that weren’t suitable for me, and when I didn’t enjoy them and felt I didn’t have time for them, I passed them on. Today I am able to choose horses that work for me, and when I do place a horse in another home, I check on that horse and make sure he is doing OK. I am, I think, a responsible, competent horse owner. But I wasn’t born knowing how to do and be this. I had to learn through my mistakes.

So today I want to ask if some of you, like me, have made some big mistakes in your journey to becoming a good horseman. Or perhaps you were able to get good advice and make many less mistakes than I did. Does anybody want to share their path?