When?

by Laura Crum

I’m currently facing a very difficult question. I’m sure you all can guess what I mean. Among my retired/rescue herd, ET, who is 31, is going downhill. Those of you who have read this blog for awhile will know that I have written about this exact situation before. But every time (and there were several), ET pulled out of it. I would worm him at a two week interval, up his feed, and in a month he’d look better and on we went. But this time the situation is a bit more complicated.

I have six pasture pets on this property about fifteen minutes from my home. Four live in the “big” pasture—about forty acres that grows pretty good grass year round—we feed hay from Sept through December in an average year and the horses usually look fine. The two oldest horses, both 31 right now, live in the two separate smaller pastures (about five acres each) and are fed year round equine senior delight (this is not Purina Equine Senior, but a complete feed made by a small mill around here that works wonders on all old horses I have tried it on), in the amount each needs, which in ET’s case means free choice, as he can no longer chew hay up, or graze much (no teeth). And this has been working pretty well for several years.

I have agonized over putting ET down off and on, as the horse will, for no reason that we can see, sometimes start eating less and losing weight, or not eating less but still losing weight, but every time, as I wrote above, I have been able to turn the trend around and he looks better. This is all complicated by the fact that as old horses will do, he seems to have lost much of his sight and hearing and at times seems a bit confused. For several years now, every fall, I wonder if its right to take him through another winter. This fall, he once again began to get thinner, and my friend Wally, who helps care for the horses with me, insisted it was time and we should set a date.

We both felt sad at the thought, but lets face it, ET is very old for a horse who was ALWAYS a hard keeper. Were it not for our willingness to pump a lot of very expensive feed into him, he would be dead long ago. Neither Wally nor I are wealthy people and the financial burden, though not the bottom line, is a factor. But both of us really want to do what’s right for ET. The cold, wet storms are coming and though we blanket him, and there is shelter, he often stands out in the rain looking miserable. Is it right to try to keep this skinny old horse going through another winter? Is it in his best interests, even leaving our best interests out of it?

And then there is Rebby. Rebby is part of the group that lives in the big field and he is in his mid/late 20’s now, and is no longer keeping his weight on in the pasture. In order to take proper care of Rebby, we really should put him in one of the smaller fields and supplement him with the senior feed. But we can’t put him in with either of the two older horses as he’d be dominant and would take the feed they need to survive. If ET were gone, Rebby could have that field and be able to thrive.

If we lived out there, or had endless free time, we could bring Reb in and supplement him, and then put him back out. But Wally and I have busy lives and we don’t live there and its all we can do to make it out there every morning to feed, with the occasional extra trip to blanket, or meet the farrier…etc. We divide these chores between us and periodically moan over the money and time we spend on these perfectly useless horses, but we just keep doing it. We’ve been caring for the horse herd in this pasture for over ten years. In that time we’ve euthanized two horses due to the maladies of old age, and both were pretty clear cases. One had gotten so crippled he could hardly hobble without major pain killers twice a day, and one went down with a stroke/seizure and couldn’t get up. Of course, nature abhors a vacuum, so these two horses were promptly replaced by two others, one of which was ET.

ET makes no sense at all. He was never my personal horse. He was a team roping horse that I saw at many ropings, being traded from cowboy to cowboy. Nobody ever cared much about him that I could tell, but he gave good service to many. He was perhaps the oddest looking horse I’d ever seen, and yet a very effective performer. He was also dog gentle, little kid gentle, and endured several very abusive owners without protest. Just kept doing a good job. But he kept being put on the market—I suppose because he was so odd looking, and each time he was older and the price was less. The last time he was 18 years old, and it was easy to see what his eventual fate would be. So I bought him.

Yep, I am not the sharpest knife in the drawer. For awhile I was able to farm him out as a kid’s horse, but ET was always a terribly hard keeper. One home returned him because they couldn’t afford to feed him, and the second, as I discovered, after a few years lost a job and didn’t feed him enough. When I saw how thin he was I took him back and put him in the field where I had a vacancy due to an old horse that had died. And I have kept him and cared for him ever since.

But even with all the equine senior feed in the world and a good pasture, it was hard to keep weight on ET. He’s a long skinny snake of a horse by nature (with short legs and a very long neck and one eye). He looks a little like a dachshund crossed upon a giraffe. Honest. I’ve done a pretty good job keeping weight on him, but it ain’t easy.

So, OK, I sadly agree with my friend Wally that maybe we ought to put ET down this fall. And the next day I go out there to have a good long look at the horse and see what he tells me. Well…

My son and I walk out in the field, where ET is standing, looking pretty content. Its sunny, with a breeze, and I note that ET still has plenty of equine senior in his feeder. He polishes it off in a leisurely way, over the course of a day. I walk up to the old horse, talking to him, and he swings his one eye around so he can see me and snuffles the hand I hold out to him. That one eye looks pretty bright to me. I note that I cannot actually SEE ribs or hipbones, though I can darn sure feel them. ET is getting fuzzy with his winter coat, which helps. But I don’t think he looks that bad. I rub on him a little while and then walk off to check the water.

ET watches us go and then, after a minute or two, he ambles towards his feeder. And then, who knows why, he breaks into a trot. And gee whiz, the old fart still trots sound. Rickety but sound. And he looks comfortable.

My son says tentatively, “ET looks pretty good.”

“Yeah,” I say. And I know right then I am not going to put this horse down. Not until he looks like he needs it. Which he does not at this moment. The idea of walking out into that sunny pasture and catching this sweet old horse and leading him out to get the green needle fills my heart with revulsion. ET is not suffering. He may not be exactly thriving but he looks content. He sure doesn’t look like he needs killing. And I, quite frankly, can’t bring myself to do it.

BUT. The other reasons still apply. How am I gonna feel when I walk out there this winter and see him looking miserable in the rain? How about if he goes down and lays there some cold nasty night unable to get up and we don’t find him until morning? Am I going to wish then that I’d had the heart to put him down now?

I’ve heard it said that its better to do it a day to soon than a day too late. But what if you are six months too soon or a year too soon. Is that doing them a favor? Aargh!

Let alone that I want to act in ET’s best interests, it is still totally impractical for me to be stretching us financially just to keep this one very old, borderline OK horse going, especially since I need a way to properly take care of Rebby. Practically speaking, I SHOULD put ET down. But I can’t. It feels wrong.

So when is it going to feel right? After he’s suffering? Is that a good idea? Burt and Pistol (the two old horses we euthanized) clearly needed to be put down. But ET seems to be on a slippery downhill slope and I don’t know where to draw the line. I just know I could not have led him out to the vet for the kill shot on that sunny day when he looked at me with a bright eye and snuffled me gently, then trotted over to his feeder. But when exactly am I going to feel right about it? The proverbial day “too late?” After he’s already gone through too much?

My other 31 year old horse, Gunner, looks fabulous—nobody who sees him believes how old he is. He has pasture, gets a heavy flake of alfalfa every morning and half the senior feed ET gets, and he’s doing just great. And my previous horse, Burt, survived into his late thirties in very good flesh and spirits on this same diet—right up until the morning he had his stroke. ET is just a VERY hard keeper. I guess its possible that I could devise a diet that would be more ideal for ET, but to what purpose exactly? Wally and I both feel maxed out on the amount of time, energy and money we are putting into our pasture pets already. (And for those who read my last month’s post on “Good Enough—Or Not?”, we did end up rebuilding the worst section of fence—at our own expense.) And its not as though I can make ET young again. No matter what, his inevitable end is drawing near.

Argh! I am frustrated and worried, and I have to admit, if you gave me a magic wand I might make that whole lot of old horses disappear. I have enough on my plate just caring for the four horses here at home. But there is no magic wand. There is the kill shot, and if I do not have the heart to kill a horse than I must keep taking adequate care of him. But what is adequate care in this case? I cannot afford to spend more money on ET than I am already doing, so diagnostic vet work is out of the question, and I don’t really think it is appropriate at this point. I don’t have a cushy box stall to put him in for the winter, even supposing he would care for that, which I’m pretty sure he wouldn’t. The horse is sound and not in obvious pain—he’s failing because he’s getting very old and always had a tricky metabolism. No magic pill from the vet is going to fix that—at least in any significant/permanent way. And nobody is going to take this problem off my hands. In the springtime, when I see all these old guys grazing on green grass in the sunshine and looking very happy, my heart just fills up with joy and it all seems so worthwhile. Heading into winter storms with an old horse that is slowly going downhill it seems like a very heavy burden to bear. Whatever I choose is wrong. Or at least not right.

Its easy to say ET is old and failing and a burden therefore its OK to put him down. Its easy to say that’s the best choice for him. It’s a lot harder (at least for me) to look him in his kind, bright eye and decide to kill him here and now when he doesn’t seem to be suffering. I’m stumped.

OK—anybody have any insights? I am pretty worn out with worrying about this and a bit, OK more than a bit, depressed over it, as I’m sure you can tell. Or maybe its just the autumn doldrums, which others have referenced on their blogs. Whatever it is, I feel sad and confused.

A Good Deed....

by Laura Crum


My last post about abusive training practices and whether harsh methods are sometimes called for (or not) got me thinking about the flip side of that coin. Things are often not quite so black and white as we like to suppose. When is a good deed not really a good deed?

In my lifetime, I’ve saved a fair number of horses from ending up at the livestock auction to take their chances with the kill buyers. Some of these horses I kept, some I found homes for. And there is one that I “saved”, many years ago, that still troubles me. I meant well, and it seemed the right thing to do at the time, but now I wonder.

Twenty years ago now, my uncle raised QHs and stood one stud (among others) that ultimately proved to produce a great many very resistant horses (I’ve blogged about this before). Some of these horses were truly dangerous; they were willing to be very violent in their resistance, including bucking, rearing, flipping over backward…etc. But to begin with, when the first of this stud’s foals were two and three, what people noticed was that they were big, pretty horses that seemed very relaxed and gentle.

These horses were gentle to handle on the ground, and pretty easy to start. The problem did not become apparent, usually, until the horse was put to work and asked to exert himself. These horses did not care to work, and very many of them became very adamant about it. And so we come to Noble.

Noble was one of the early colts by this stallion, and he was a big, pretty, blaze faced sorrel (like most of em). A friend of my uncle’s bought the horse. Bill was a knowledgable enough horseman and he sent Noble to a good trainer to be started. The man had no trouble with the colt. Bill rode Noble for awhile, very gently, and all went well. But, eventually, Bill started to rope on Noble and ride him in the mountains and ask the (by then five year old) horse to do some things that required real effort. And Noble resisted.

Noble’s resistance took many forms. He would unexpectedly buck (very hard) and buck Bill off. He would rear and try to fall over backward while climbing steep hills. He began to pull back and go over backward when tied. He spooked violently and tried to bolt. He dumped Bill many times.

Those of us who knew Bill and liked him all advised him to get rid of Noble. I saw the horse pull some of these stunts and the gelding had a very blind look in his eyes, which really scared me. Somehow or other, when Noble decided to be resistant, he blanked out. He was perfectly willing to hurt himself, as well as his rider. Such a horse is virtually untrainable, in my opinion.

Now, remember, nobody had done anything bad to Noble. He was brought along in a responsible, kind way and Bill was really fond of him. In fact, he refused to give up on the horse, despite being urged to do so by all his friends. He kept riding Noble and trying to get along with him.

And now we come to Fine. Fine was Noble’s full brother, and another big, good looking, blaze-faced sorrel. My uncle liked the looks of Fine and decided to keep the colt. He broke and trained the three year old himself and at first all went well. Like his brother, Fine initially seemed to be an easy going, cooperative horse.

It was a year or more into training when Fine suddenly and unexpectedly bucked my uncle off—hard. My uncle took it as an aberration and kept working with the horse. But we both wondered. Noble, still owned by Bill, had continued to pull unexpected and violent stunts. And I thought Fine showed the same blank look when he bucked.

It happened again. Fine, for no reason that we could see, just came unglued and dumped my uncle. And my uncle, disgusted, told me to haul the five year old horse to the local livestock auction.

I had a hard time with this. I worked for my uncle at that time, and I had helped work with Fine some. In most ways he seemed a gentle, cooperative horse. And now we were going to dump him and take the chance that he would go to kill. I thought maybe I just needed to find him a home with a real good hand.

So I made a deal. I sold Fine (with my uncle’s agreement) very cheaply to a horse trainer I knew who was a good hand. And I told him that Fine had twice bucked my uncle off hard—for no reason. This trainer took Fine and rode him for six months—used him hard—as a turnback horse and for gathering and ranch work. And the horse gave him no trouble. At the end of that time the trainer sold Fine to a local rancher—for his teenage daughter to ride. The trainer told me this and assured me that Fine was, well, fine.

That’s all I know about Fine. But our friend Bill kept Noble until the horse was twenty and Noble continued to pull dangerous, violent stunts the rest of his life. He would go for months, sometimes a year, without misbehaving, and Bill would think he was over it. But something would inevitably trigger the horse and Noble would once again do some unpredictable and violent thing. Bill finally put him down when Noble injured himself severely pulling back—at twenty years of age. And Bill admitted that he should have done this a long time ago.

My uncle, based on Noble and Fine, got rid of the mare who was their mother and sold the younger colts of that cross. But over time it became clear that a great many colts by that same sire carried this violent, resistant streak. And these horses did not get better over time. They went to different trainers and owners, and were trained using different methods, and still the results were the same. Over and over people gave up on these horses because after years of training, the horses were still capable of doing something truly dangerous—with no warning at all. They blanked out. And I can’t help wondering if Fine some day hurt someone badly, and if I should have been more careful about who he went to.

At the time I really didn’t understand how pervasive and dangerous this attitude was among the get of that stallion, and by the time I did understand, it was too late. I had no idea how to track the horse down. So, I did nothing. And I still feel bad about it.

Yep, I meant to do a good deed by saving Fine from going to the auction. And I’m still not sure exactly what I should have done differently. Let him go to kill? Predjudiced everyone against the horse by saying his siblings were untrainable? Maybe Fine really did go on to be “fine”. I sure hope so.

I’ve learned to be a little more thoughtful these days—before I jump to the conclusion that I know exactly what abuse is or when I need to do a “good deed”. I still try to do the best I can for the horses that come my way, but I’m not quite as judgemental as I used to be. Sometimes the truth is a little more complicated than we like to suppose.

Anybody want to chime in on this? Have you seen something that looked “bad” that turned out to have some merit, and conversely, seen someone trying to do good, who instead created a bad problem? Any thoughts?

Horses, Joy, and the New Year

by Laura Crum


Today I want to share a happy story, in honor of the new year and the hope I think we all hold that 2010 will be full of joy. Here in coastal California its greengrass season—all the pastures are bright with new grass. Those of you who have read my posts know that I keep five retired/rescued horses turned out in a nearby pasture. The other day my kid and I went out to do a little reshuffling, and were treated to such a happy moment that it made us both grin from ear to ear. So I thought I’d share it.

First, the background. My five pasture pets have various histories. One is my thirty year old horse, Gunner, who has been my horse since he was three. I got him when he had thirty days on him, and trained him to be a reasonably successful reined cowhorse, cutting horse, and team roping head horse, in that order. I did all the work myself; I was his sole rider. I still have many trophy buckles, headstalls and blankets that Gunner won for me. Gunner is featured prominently in my mystery series starring equine vet Gail McCarthy, so many readers know him from these stories. Gunner was retired at fifteen, due to various arthritic complaints, but he still trots sound today. Needless to say I have endless loyalty to Gunner, and had always firmly intended to retire him and give him the best life I could. However, my other pasture pets are a mixed bag, and I’m never quite sure how I acquired them all.

One is a horse I trained for my team roping partner. Rebby was never technically mine, but I did all the training on him, and was/am very fond of him. I’ve told his story in some blog post or other—I can’t any more remember the title or when it was done. In any case my partner and I agreed to share the burden of retiring Rebby when this great horse was crippled at the peak of his career. At nine years old Rebby came up with an aberrant wobble in his stride. He didn’t seem to be painful, but he was uncoordinated. Many dollars and a year later, there was no definitive diagnosis. The likliest culprits were/are a strained sacroiliac joint or EPM. In any case, that was over ten years ago, and Rebby has remained exactly the same. He walks, trots and lopes with a weird waddle, appears to feel fine, and does not deteriorate. He’s a friendly horse (was a bottle colt) and we all love him.

Next we come to Danny. Danny was my horse. I’d known him since he was born, and always liked him. I bought him as a three year old with thirty days on him, just like Gunner. Danny was the last colt I ever trained. After I’d been riding Danny for a year I got pregnant at the age of 42. And I quit riding. I let my friends finish turning Danny into a rope horse and he made a good one. But he was crippled in a freak accident when he was seven (hit by a truck—it’s a long story, and I’ve blogged about Danny before, too), and I made the choice to retire this very nice bay horse who is and will always be slightly lame in the left hind.

Then, there’s ET. I’m sure I’ve blogged about him, too. ET was never my horse. ET was the funniest looking horse I’d ever seen, and a great team roping heel horse. He was sold from cowboy to cowboy and as he got older and older it was easy to see what his end would be. I’d always admired him—such a sweet, gentle, hard trying horse, and really talented. He looks like a cross between a dachshund and a giraffe and is missing an eye (I’m not kidding). He was named by a previous owner because of his resemblance to the famous space alien. And he is the hardest keeper I ever knew. But he makes me smile and to make another long story short, I bought him and retired him. ET is thirty years old this coming year (like Gunner) and like Gunner, he still trots sound.

And, finally Gray Dog. Gray Dog makes no sense at all. I have too many horses. And yet I let a friend foist this older gentle lame (of course) gray gelding on me. However, turns out I’m very fond of Gray Dog, too. My post on him was titled “An Old Gray Horse”, if you happened to see it.

My five pasture pets live with an OTTB mare that the pasture owner rescued many years ago. So we have six of these old useless horses on this twenty five acre property. The property is divided into one twenty acre field which has an underground spring and grows very strong pasture—in a good year it supports four horses with only about a month or so of feeding hay. There are also a couple of two to three acre separate fenced fields. Because ET is such a hard keeper, he must live by himself in one of the small fields and eat free choice equine senior delight. Gunner lives in the other small field and gets a ration of equine senior delight that works for him. Until recently, Gray Dog lived with Gunner because he was skinny when I got him and I needed to put some weight on him. But the small field didn’t like having two horses. As the green grass tried to grow the horses mowed it down until the field looked like a bumpy putting green, and it was apparent that I needed to change something. Since Gray Dog is now in very good flesh, I decided to put him in the big field with Danny, Rebby and Ariel—the OTTB mare.

And now we come to the story. I moved Gray Dog on a sunny winter morning. The fields were brilliantly green, and the air was warm. The three horses in the big field came loping over the hill, feeling good despite their various soundness issues, and greeted their new companion. Gray Dog flagged his tail and trotted in big circles. Ariel crowhopped like a filly. Danny and Rebby came over to the gate to nuzzle me and my kid. And then Danny and ET did something so cute it just made my day.

Each on the opposite side of their common fenceline, the two horses paced down the fence together very purposefully. Their necks were arched and they pranced a little, but they were basically walking. Down and down they went, maybe fifty yards away. My son and I watched them, wondering what they would do.

Suddenly, as if at a signal, both horses wheeled around and began to run toward us, jumping forward as if starting from the header’s box—or the starting gate. Side by side, with the fence between them, they ran flat out straight towards us, as hard as they could run. My thirty year old horse and my cripple. They ran like the wind. Racing each other for fun. Running for joy.

My son’s eyes were wide, his face virtually glowed. “Its like being in ‘Spirit’”, he said (we rented that movie not too long ago).

And it was, actually. There we stood, in the sunny, wide open meadow, watching two horses galloping right at us. They pulled up as they neared us, manes and tails flying, and made a big circle around us.

“Danny won,” my son said. “But ET ran hard.”

Both horses trotted and snorted, looking proud of themselves. Danny came over for a head rub. My little boy patted ET’s shoulder. And I thought how much fun it all was, just being with these old useless horses on this sunny winter morning. Even if I can’t ride any more, even then, there will still be much joy to be had with horses. And I am so grateful that I have been able to share this joy with my young son.

Happy New Year to all of you. May many joyful “horsey” moments come your way in 2010.

And if any of you have any happy moments with your own horses to share, I'd love to hear them. Also, don't forget about "Reader's Write" Saturdays. Send Jami something you'd like to post on Equestrian Ink--a short piece of your own fiction, a description of the book you'd like to write, your own horse's story--anything you think would interest our readers. Send to jamidavenport@att.net

General Lee

by Laura Crum


I’ve owned quite a few horses in my life. And because I rode my uncle’s horses, and rode for various trainers, I also rode a lot of horses that weren’t mine. Once in awhile, out of a clear blue sky, I’ll remember some horse I haven’t thought about in years. And the other day I remembered General Lee.

General Lee belonged to my uncle. He was a “trading horse” of no particular interest or value. He’d been somebody’s backyard horse and my uncle had acquired him for a few hundred. Once it was clear that the horse would not make a team roping horse, my uncle’s only purpose was to sell the animal at a profit. To this end he offered to loan me the horse for the summer, with the idea that I could put a few miles on the animal and make him more salable as a riding horse.

I was off at college at the time. I had just sold Hobby, a gelding I’d trained to be a reasonably successful reined cowhorse. In the fall I would buy Burt, a green broke five-year-old that I kept until his death in his late thirties. But for that one summer I did not have a horse. I agreed to take General Lee.

General Lee was a middle-aged gray gelding turned white, with a thick cresty neck and a heavy-boned, coarse frame. He looked a bit like an old war horse—thus the name. We always referred to him as “the General.” He was easy enough to climb on and ride, but not either well broke or reliable, as I found out. He was capable of bolting, rearing, constant jigging and stupidities such as turning sideways while descending steep hills. He was not a particularly endearing horse. I kept him at the Cal Poly San Luis Obispo campus and rode him through the hills there. I have memories of times he nearly got me killed and also happy memories of riding through that beautiful landscape on the old white horse.

One moment in particular sticks in my mind. A sunny summer afternoon, I was riding through the hills alone on General Lee. As we neared a place where the railroad tracks crossed the dirt road I was on, I could hear the train coming. I stopped, a ways from the tracks and waited. I was not entirely sure how the General would react to a train. The train, when it appeared, turned out to be the Amtrak, and the General turned out to be indifferent to trains. I stood by the side of the tracks and waved back to all the people waving at me from the windows. For a moment I saw myself through their eyes and imagined how colorful I must appear. A young blond woman on a white horse, way out in the middle of the wide-open hills, miles from any town. I realized just how lucky I was to be this person. And then the train was gone.

Summer wore on. I put some miles on the General. I let my friends ride him--with mixed success. No one was hurt, at least. The horse remained an ill-broke, not-too-reliable critter, but he was fun to have around. If you weren't an anxious rider, he was perfectly servicable as a trail horse.


When fall came, I sent the General back to my uncle. I never knew what became of him. Presumably he was sold to be a riding horse. But my uncle was perfectly capable of hauling such a horse to the local livestock auction and letting him take his chances. I never knew. I never even asked.

I was young, about twenty. I had been around my uncle and his somewhat callous way of treating horses all my life; I took it for granted. In my later years I began to think for myself and developed a huge distaste for such callousness. But at that time it did not occur to me to be concerned about the fate of General Lee.

When I think of the horse now, I feel very sad. He was one of many trading horses that my uncle went through over the years. I am sure that many of them did not come to a good end. And I rode and enjoyed lots of them. But General Lee was, for one brief summer, “my” horse, under my control. I could have kept him, if I chose, or found him a home. Today I would naturally assume this responsibility. Then I didn’t think to do so.

I remember that moment as the train went by and I wish I had thought to value what that horse gave me.

Its one of many things I wish I could do over. I wish I had had more understanding when I was young. I wish I’d done my part to place that old white horse in a good home. But its too late now. I can only do the best I can for the horses I have in my care, including my rescue horses and retirees. And I can help, once in awhile, to place a horse like Harley (see last month’s post—“A Thanksgiving Story”) in a forever home. And I can say “I’m sorry” to General Lee and all the others that I just didn’t step forward for.

I know we can’t help them all. And I’m not really beating myself up. I just think that most of us carry a little of this particular sorrow—the pain of all the horses we’ve known that we didn’t/couldn’t help. When, once in awhile, such a horse crosses our mind, we think, “I wish”….or at least I do.

A Thanksgiving Story

By Laura Crum


First of all, I wanted to let you all know that I'm not the only writer left on this blog. My fellow authors have had some health problems--themselves, their family, their horses (and I hope your mare is doing well, Jami)and/or they are very busy right now and unable to post. As a group, we've all agreed that we need to prioritize the important things (family, health, horses...etc) over writing blog posts. So, currently I'm holding down the fort. But I'm sure the others will be back as they feel able. Anyway, today I wanted to share a story about something I'm thankful for, in honor of Thanksgiving.

Awhile ago I wrote a post about a horse named Harley—a good team roping horse who suffered a suspensory tear, and after two years of rehab and two surgeries was still not sound enough to be a rope horse. Harley was pasture sound, however, and my uncle, who owned him, wanted to find him an appropriate home. A friend of mine, who had loved horses in her youth but hadn’t ridden for years, was interested in taking Harley. Though she had some land, she didn’t have a horse corral, merely a pen where she kept her goats. She really didn’t know a lot about horses, and I was torn over whether it was a good choice to give her this fairly high-powered, though well broke, horse. Some of you wrote in, and most said I should give it a try. This was my feeling, too, so I went over to my friend’s home, helped her make a plan for horsekeeping, and several weeks later my uncle delivered Harley. So here’s the follow up.

My friend’s husband built her a nice corral and shed for the horse. My friend’s twenty year old son took a big interest in the project. Between them, this family groomed and handwalked and grazed Harley every day. Last week the friend reported to me that Harley looked sound to them, but would I come see. I went over there last Weds and Harley did indeed look servicably sound. Trotted in a straight line on hard ground, he didn’t bob. The family asked if he was sound enough to ride. I told them yes, he was plenty sound enough to be walked and trotted lightly. The son climbed on the horse bareback, with a halter, and walked him around, and though Harley was reasonably cooperative, it was clear that the horse had a lot of life, and it would be better to ride him with a saddle and bridle.

I found an old saddle that they could buy cheap, and loaned them a bridle and saddle pad. On Saturday, I brought the gear, and a friend of mine who used to rope on the horse, over to their house, and Mark (the friend) gave them a first lesson. Harley did great. My friend’s son rode him very successfully. I think they’re off to a good start as a partnership. Harley looks happy and in good flesh. He’s come back to riding horse soundness. And he’s such a nice horse. I was really tickled.

So here’s a happy story for the day before Thanksgiving. I am so grateful that I was able to put Harley and this family together. They are enjoying and benefiting each other, and to think that Harley was about to be put down if a home couldn’t be found(!) What a waste that would have been. It is just so much fun when we are able to facilitate something like this. I wanted to share this story and thank those of you who advised me to give this situation a chance. And if anybody else has a happy ending story to share, I’d love to hear it. Happy Thanksgiving!--Laura