Tell me your horse stories!

[Hidalgo]

So mine isn't a long story. I've never had a horse of my own, but my older sister (I'll call her Sis) had 3 Arabians and my favorite one was a lovely bay mare named Taj Tradon. Sis trained all her horses using the Parelli method, and they were all a well behaved but spirited bunch. We used to take them on wild bareback rides on the old logging trails on the mountains nearby. One of my favorite memories is from one day when Sis made a Cherokee for Taj and after making sure it Taj was comfortable with it, we rode her around in the field. I even have pictures from that day! Honestly I was kind of spoiled with Taj because I've never met a horse since with such a sweet and willing personality, and she put up with my inexperienced 13-year-old self as I learned about training horses from my Sis. Now anytime I get a chance to ride I happily jump on it but for some reason it seems people are always putting me on their barn-sour bucker that hasn't been ridden in six months, and then the person acts all surprised their horse is acting up Someday if I have the money and the space I'd love to get my own horse but I have the feeling there will never be another like Taj

Edited to add: most horses should not be ridden with a Cherokee--also known as an Indian war bridle. It's only safe on a very chill and well trained horse that can rely mainly on leg cues, and a rider with a gentle hand. Otherwise it can damage the sensitive skin on the mouth or in the worst case scenario if an extremely strong and rough person is riding, it can even break the horse's jaw.

First image: Me and Taj doing one of the Parelli warmups before riding (pretty similar to lunging). And no, I'm not adjusting a wedgie my hand placement looks funny because I just switched which hand the rope is in.
Second image: Me riding Taj with the Cherokee
I wish I could post better pictures that show off Taj's beautiful self, but I had to choose ones without my face, so...

[Tom]

Keep the horse stories coming! They are great

[RynzoRye]

My cousins used to own a haflinger named 'Nagai ashi' 長い脚 (pronounced as Na-guy-A-shuhEE), which meant 'Long-legged' in japanese. He was fairly lanky and was liver-colored with a flaxen mane. Due to his long legs (hence the name..) he used to hump the carts we used to transfer cornstalks and it was just hilarious. He's grown out of it now and is well behaved. His favorite thing to do now is to make a mess of himself whenever it's rainy outside.

[BlackOak2]

A thought about insight.

Have you ever looked at trotter horses versus a horse that's just trotting?
A horse that trots, if you look from the side, you can draw a circle as the hip moves up, around, down and back again. But for a trotter, one needs to look from above, downward, to see the circle. A trotter will move their leg in a circle, out, forward (hit the ground), straight backward and again.
Two circles, two different visuals.
A newly trotting, trotter horse, will trot in the side-visual. But a trotter horse that's been trained to 'trot as fast as you can', will eventually learn the side-to-side rocking motion that this creates, rather than the up and down they start with.

I do wonder, if it's starting to develop into different skeletal or structural genes. After all, a racehorse's career ends after about 5 years (give or take), but a trotter or pacer can keep performing at maximum into their 20th year. Although for stakes, I do notice that they limit it at 15 years. A couple years ago, I watched an 18 year old win a basic race (-_- I swear he was 18, but I have no proof, just memory). It's interesting to see their bodies hold up when racehorses have a much, much shorter max-performance career life... but not surprising.

I don't have any other horse-fixing stories, rather, I have only a couple of 'what happened' incidents. Things that don't get fixed. For instance, a Tb mare was crossed to a QH stud and they threw a wobbles foal. -_-

[Sawd10]

Closed.

[Silverine]

Oh goodness. Let's see how many stories I have. (I have way more than these. I'll add more as they come to me. )

1. Magic
Dark brown TB mare, I believe she was about 15 at the time. JC registered as Zam Zama.

Magic was something else. She was an absolute witch to other horses. But she wasn't alpha mare. Just hated everyone and made sure they knew it. And even humans were iffy at meal times. She also had the worst case of "resting mare face" that I have ever seen. But man if she wasn't a fun ride. Lovely trot, rocking-horse canter, point-and-shoot to the jumps. Just everything you could ever want in a school horse.

Well, our barn owner (after some heartbreak regarding breeding her personal horse) decided to breed Magic to a local friesian stallion. Everything went smoothly as far as I'm aware and Magic came home in foal. Barn owner immediately put her in her own field away from everybody else (though she could still see them and touch over the fence). I think it was to keep her safe from being kicked, not that she actually needed that. But whatever the case, Magic was almost instantly a much happier animal.

The pregnancy went smoothly. No complications or worries. A few weeks before the due date I asked if I could do foal-watch and was granted permission to sleep over at the barn. (I think the barn owner was kind of relieved someone actually wanted to do it - she lived 20 minutes from the barn and the only people on the property were her parents who were not horse people.) That first week I was joined by one other person with a rather large group on the first weekend nights. We actually ended up getting everyone except myself banned from sleeping over because we got a little crazy - running up and down the driveway (away from the house, not toward it) waving flashlights everywhere and cackling like lunatics. I'm actually not sure how I managed to retain permission. My guess is that the owner's parents knew me best (they'd known me for eight or so years at that point) and I was an adult so they figured that it was all of the kids being "stupid" without their parents around. (Little did they know I was happily participating in the madness. )

Aaaanyway - I slept in that barn for three whole weeks. Every day we'd clean Magic's pen (she had a jerry-rigged foaling "stall" of a roundpen attached to the door of a barn stall) and examine her lady bits. If the barn owner wasn't there I would snap some pics and send them to her. It would have been very embarrassing if a random person had gone through my camera roll at that time. By the end of the three week period I was getting somewhat frustrated with looking at and seeing signs but still no baby. And then I read some advice that said to not only squeeze out a drop of milk to see color and consistency but to also taste it.

So yes, I have tasted horse milk. The advice was that if the milk tasted sweet in the late afternoon you were likely to have baby that night. And it held true. The lovely little filly was born just after 11PM that evening. And I was the only one present. The birth went just perfectly. At one point I was watching Magic push and the way the foal came out it had curled up between her hind legs with the head on Magic's hocks. I got in there and moved the baby just enough so that its head wasn't squished when Magic stopped straining and her leg came back down. I was the first human hands to ever touch that baby! It was super cool.

We had been a little worried that Magic would reject the baby given how much she hated other horses, but she took to being a mom straight away. That first night baby had gotten up and taken like half a step and then fallen down right next to the side of the round pen. The spot where she fell was in shadow and Magic couldn't see her and she went NUTS. We were actually worried that Magic would trample the baby with how she was darting back and forth looking for her. One person and I managed to corral Magic into the barn and somehow stopped her from charging outside while the barn owner and another person got the foal up and inside. (This was done because there was light inside and Magic wouldn't lose baby while they were in the barn whereas the pen did not have a direct light source and it was raining.)

For six months Magic was a perfect mom to that baby. The barn owner was planning on loading up mom and baby and taking baby over to a friend's place to leave her for weaning on the day baby turned six months old. Instead, I get a phone call telling me Magic had died. Turns out Magic had a pretty bad heart murmur that wasn't detected (or possibly didn't exist) until she was pregnant. She made it through the pregnancy and birth and then gave that baby everything she had for six months more. Somehow on that day she knew that baby no longer needed her and gave up the fight.

Here's Magic when she first arrived:


Magic one month before Rain was born:


The night of Rain's birth after we brought them inside:




2. Rain
Black (or possibly black bay) Friesian x TB mare, Magic's foal. Born 2014.

Oh, Rain. Named because of the weather when she was born and also partially because we didn't think there could be anything "bad" about naming her that (unlike if you name a horse "Buck" and it turns out to be a bucker or something like that). But she sure has been something.

She's been having incidents for as long as I can remember but I'll just relay two of them. The first one was when she was maybe three months old. She somehow managed to split her face open from just above her eye all the way down her nasal bone to the middle of her nose. No idea how she did it. Best guess is that she either did something and Magic accidentally kicked her, or she ran head first into a fence. Whatever the case the vet had to come out and sew up her face. Even all these years later she has a long row of perfectly spaced, tiny white dots marking where she had stitches.

Then she had a really-scary-but-actually-not-bad one shortly after Magic died. The barn owner brought her into the barn and put her in a stall. I didn't realize that she hadn't actually been inside the barn since her first week or two of life and never without mom. She was put in a stall and the barn owner immediately went out to grab another horse to put next to her. Meanwhile it was just me, Rain, and the barn owner's mother. I was stood in front of the door of the stall and noticed that Rain looked really upset and like she wanted to jump over the door. So I stood in front of the door to make sure she couldn't. So instead of jumping over the door she decided to jump over the side of the stall.

She made the jump, but there was a bucket on a hanger on that wall of the stall and she somehow managed to get her hoof in it. So her front legs landed on the far side of the wall, but her one hind leg got caught over the wall with her hoof in the bucket. (The wall is maybe four feet high.) I'm standing there wide-eyed, having no idea what to do. Meanwhile the barn owner's mom is screaming, thinking the horse is dying. (I was thinking that, too, but at least I wasn't screaming.) Barn owner (on her way back with the other horse) hears something going on, lets the other horse loose (she was still in the field with it) and legs it back to the barn. She wasn't far away and Rain's hoof was still caught in the bucket when she got to us.

Luckily Rain's hoof did not require any help for extraction and popped out after some time (probably less than a minute, though it feels like forever in my memory). The barn owner immediately grabbed her halter and walked out of the barn and into the arena to hand walk her a bit and see how she was. Amazingly she had no cuts or bruises. She never took one limping step. Literally the only thing worse for wear from the experience was the bucket. It survived - but its handle was forever bent.

Here's Rain a few hours after birth:




3. Ground Bees
Not a horse. Incident involving multiple horses. Summer of 2011.

So the barn I board at does a summer camp for kids. Back "in the day" I liked to go out and help and ride my own horse. This particular day the campers were doing a trail ride for their afternoon ride. There's a part of the trail that we call the triangle that is perfect for playing around - trotting, cantering, jumping, just goofing off in general. Another girl was at the barn hanging with her horse and we decided to head off before the campers and play around a bit.

We got down to the triangle and did our thing. Had a great time. Eventually the barn owner shows up with the campers. The girl and I decide we've had our fun and that we'll tag along with the campers back to the barn. We fall in line behind them, me in front of the other girl.

We get a little bit of the way back to the barn and the line stops. The girl and I are maybe thirty feet behind the end of the line of campers. I move my horse to the side to get a view of the front of the line thinking one of the campers might need help, but it's the barn owner's horse that's having a problem. At first I thought maybe it was just him having a baby fit - he was a green youngster so having a small malfunction wasn't unheard of. But then I hear the barn owner yell "everyone get off your horses!"

I looked around, confused. I think I probably glanced at the other girl. Then the barn owner yells again: "everyone get off your horses!"

Well now she's said it twice, this definitely isn't a joke, so the girl and I dismount. The camper in front of us manages to dismount but forgets to keep hold of her horse and it runs off. The girl in front of her falls off and her horse runs off. The final camper does not fall off and is still on her horse when it takes off. I can't remember what happened to the barn owner's horse. I think she'd gotten off and had him in hand but I really don't recall for sure.

Anyway, barn owner made sure the camper that had fallen was okay and then told the two campers that were still there to stay with myself and the other girl. Then she took off after the girl on the runaway horse. (The trail is small and really the only place the horses would go is the barn but it's still not good to have a young child on an uncontrolled horse.)

I started forward, still not sure what happened. I don't know what cued me in but as I walked forward I looked at the ground. It was absolutely swarming with bees. I stopped and immediately turned back to the other girl. "We should probably go around." Understatement of the year.

Luckily the area by the triangle is set up with a lot of connecting paths and it was a quick little detour to backtrack and go the other way around. The campers had waited for us on the other side of the swarm and we gathered them up and began walking back to the barn, comforting the camper that had fallen off on the way.

We get down this big hill and see the third camper walking toward us. She's sniffling a little but not badly. Turns out she'd fallen off when her horse jumped the creek on her flight back to the barn. The barn owner had met up with the girl, made sure she wasn't badly injured, and told her to walk back and meet up with us while she continued on to gather up the horses. The five of us made our way back to the barn and though some of the campers had a few bumps and bruises no one was truly the worse for wear. And we ended up with a super interesting story.

Also, that girl on the runaway horse is actually a very successful rider now. It's crazy to think that I knew her when she was that little and new to riding.

Oh, and the horses that took off would flinch ridiculously every time a fly landed on them for like a week. It wasn't funny at the time but sure is now.



4. Jet and the Fire Ants
Black RMH gelding. Not sure of age at the time.

Short and sweet. One day I show up and the barn and my boy's left side is COVERED in weeping hives. Super gross. We sent a picture to the vet before having him out. Diagnosis: Jet stepped in a fire ant nest and either was too stubborn to move when they started biting him or had so many on him by the time they started biting that it didn't matter if he moved or not. Treatment was to cold hose the worst areas, clean up the puss, and let him rest for the day.

Here's a pic of Jet with a camper back in 2019:




5. Surprise
Bay TB x draft mare. Not sure of age at time of incident.

So many years ago I participated in my barn's show team. We had so many people on the team that we had to take two trailers to the show. Usually I would meet everyone at the barn and we'd all head to the show in a big caravan. This particular morning I had to meet them at the show grounds due to some stuff I had going anyway.

Anyway, I get to the show grounds. A few minutes later the barn owner shows up with the big trailer and other team members. We hang around for a few minutes, wondering where the other people are with the little trailer. (For those curious, the people driving the little trailer are the people that bought Valora in the Valora story, though that doesn't have anything to do with this incident.) Some more time goes by and we start to get worried.

After yet some more time the barn owner comes over and says we have to go, something happened with the other trailer. She loads all of the show team up, I hop in my car, and we hit the road. We're told that the little trailer is at a church maybe five miles down the road from the barn. At this point I have no idea what the "something" that happened was. I don't know if the barn owner knew exactly what had happened at that point or if she just knew we needed to get over there.

I can't remember if the barn owner got there in front of me or if I got there first. It doesn't really matter. All I know is I get out of the car and I know immediately that it's bad and I haven't even seen anything yet. I walk toward the trailer and at this point my brain must not have been processing any visual information from that or I have blocked it out because I don't remember what I saw. What I do remember is the older daughter of the driver. She was clearly upset, and I can't blame her. So I went to her and gave her a hug and saw if there was anything I could do for her because I knew there was nothing I could do in the trailer itself. (There had only been one horse inside, barn owner had already hopped inside to see what could be done, trailer driver was back there, I knew I'd just be in the way.)

At this point my brain finally starts processing visual input into memory. There is blood under the trailer flowing in a river down the driveway. Or at least what looked like a river. Despite that the trailer itself looks to be in one piece. I eventually came to find out that Surprise (the horse in the trailer) had had her back legs fall through the floor while they'd been going down the road.

We stayed at the church for a bit figuring out what to do. I will honestly say that I was pretty sure we were going to have to euthanize Surprise. But no one really knew the extent of the injuries and we had a hard time figuring out what to do. I think what eventually happened (though my memory is hazy and I had to leave to take a friend that was with me back home) is that the people driving the trailer stayed with Surprise and the trailer and waited for the vet while the barn owner took the other horses back to the farm and then came back with the (now empty) big trailer. I don't remember if the vet initially met them at the church or if they got Surprise back to the barn before the vet got out. What I do know is that by the time I was done taking my friend home and got back everyone, including Surprise and the vet, were back at the barn.

To cut to the chase: Surprise survived with only minor injuries. The copious amounts of blood were from the front of her hind cannon bones getting sliced open. But she had no broken bones, no injuries that involved her joints, and her hooves looked like they'd merely had a particularly vigorous session with the farrier's rasp (as explained to us by our farrier).

I'm convinced that what saved Surprise is that she was loose in the trailer and had been standing backwards. Because of that her legs were forced in a direction that they are actually able to bend when they fell through the floor rather than being snapped the wrong way. And amazingly enough Surprise did not have a fear of trailers after this. The barn owner does think she has some lasting injuries to her locomotion in her rear end that caused her dressage career to end early (and I don't doubt that) but she is otherwise sound and happy and a wonderful horse.

Here is Surprise two days after the accident (obviously having some pain in the rear but otherwise remarkably whole):




6. Tonka
Bay TB (or possibly warmblood) gelding. Unknown age.

This one is actually at a different barn than my other stories. It takes place at the first barn I took lessons at. This particular barn moved ridiculously slowly in their lesson program. I'd been riding there once a week for a year and had not cantered yet. (I think I still suffer from confidence issues regarding cantering because of this, but that's neither here nor there.)

So anyway, this one day I look at the assigned horses for lessons and I'm on one I haven't ridden before: Tonka. I was very excited because he was generally a "more advanced" horse and was a huge sweetheart.

That day was the first day I ever cantered. This lesson was nineteen years ago at this point and the only part of the actual lesson that I remember is this: my instructor told me to get Tonka into a trot and go into two-point position and then ask him to canter. Tonka was more than happy to oblige. He "took off" with me clear across our half of the arena and into the beginner lesson in the other half. (He didn't actually take off - it was a decently paced hunter canter - but I was 11 and had no idea how to be in two-point, canter, and steer all at the same time. ) Eventually he stopped and I returned to my lesson while laughing hysterically.



7. Callie
Chestnut mutt mare. Unknown age.

Yet a different barn. I started riding at this barn after the one from Tonka's story and before my current barn.

Callie was... "special". I have no idea what her history was but she was very interesting. If she liked you as a rider she'd do whatever you asked. If she didn't like you all bets were off. I personally could not tell what made her like one person over another. Maybe it was random. Whatever the case, she liked me and I liked her and I always had nice rides on her.

This other girl, on the other, was not so lucky. I was having a lesson with her. I don't actually remember what horse I was riding because the most memorable part was the girl on Callie. At some point in the lesson Callie decided "enough with this crap" and took off at a fast canter. The girl could not get her to stop. The instructor told her to pull Callie into a circle to get her to slow down (usually pretty sound advice).

The girl pulled on her right rein. Callie began to circle and came into the middle of the ring next to one of the jumps and then threw a buck. The girl fell off. Directly on top of one of the little stools we liked to use as a mounting block. That little stool crumbled.

I don't remember the rest of the aftermath except that we all had to get off of our horses and the ambulance was called. The girl ended up with a broken leg of some kind but I don't actually know what she broke. After that incident Callie was labelled vaguely dangerous and only certain people were allowed to ride her. I, sadly, was not one of them.

I thought I had a picture of Callie but I don't. So here's a bunch of the other horses from that barn:




8. Valora
Palomino QH x Lusitano. Born 2010. Probably dead now.

This one is very close to my heart. I still had dreams about this horse up until my breeding adventures with Mojo began. It's entirely possible I've had dreams involving her since then but if so they haven't been as vibrant or memorable as the ones before.

Anyway. Back in late 2012 our barn owner was "gifted" a QH mare and her palomino filly. (She knew the old owners and they were moving or some such thing and wanted a soft landing for the horses so she took them.) Both horses were immensely over weight but seemed nice enough. Mom was a decent enough ride - smooth western jog, sensible mind. Slow as molasses at that point but I can't imagine there's a horse that wouldn't have been carrying that much extra weight around. Seriously, these horses were like a day from foundering. We affectionately called them sausages.

Valora was the filly. And she had not had what I would consider a "proper" upbringing for a young horse. She had never been weaned and only had rudimentary lead training. Everyone at the barn (myself included) thought she was nuts. (We also thought she was 3-4 years old instead of barely two, but that's a different matter.) Any time we brought mom in she would run the fence along the arena screaming her head off. If we put her in the barn she would scream and bang against the walls of the stall. She was basically a big toddler whose parents had never taught her manners.

Well in the very early spring of 2013 I watched the documentary "Buck" about Buck Branaman and it inspired me to work with this "crazy" horse.

Here is a direct quote from my old personal posts relating my journey with her (you will notice the discrepancy in age in this quote):

So since about March I have been working on and off with a young palomino mare at [barn] by the name of Valora Rose. She just turned four on Father's Day weekend, and before I started working with her she had had no under saddle work. She'd had plenty of experience with people, just never really been asked to work. She'd also never been separated from her dam, [horse], who came to the barn with her, and she would throw a fit whenever mom was working in the ring. (She doesn't mind that now, though.)

So, after being inspired by watching a documentary on Buck Brannaman, I decided to work with Valora. The first time I brought her in she was a pain to lead - wandered side to side, outsped me, didn't pay attention, and would stop and set back against the lead at times. That first day all I did was walk her around and have her move at a walk and trot on a lunge line. She didn't like working, but settled down and even after that first session she was noticeably better about walking on the lead.

The first two or three times I worked with Valora the only thing we did was lunge lining and practicing walking correctly on the lead. Then I decided to see how she'd deal with a saddle pad and maybe even a saddle. I brought her in and had a saddle, pad, and girth set on the side. I worked her on the lunge line for a bit and then introduced her to the tack. She took it really well, turned her head to sniff at the pad and saddle a bit but otherwise ignored them. She didn't even mind when I put the girth on, though admittedly I did not tighten the girth that first time. The next time I did put the girth a bit tighter but not very tight and both of those times I lunged her with the saddle. She was a star, and though she was slower on the line while wearing the saddle she didn't buck or otherwise show displeasure.

The third time I worked her with the saddle I decided that it was also a good time to see how she'd deal with a bridle. The first thing I did was introduce her to the bit. As is to be expected, she did not like it. She threw her head up and backed away from the scary metal bar. However, it seems that she really only disliked the feel of it against her teeth because once the bit was safely past those she calmed right down and just stood there. I finished putting the bridle on and saddled her up, then ran her a bit on the lunge line.

That day I put the bridle on for the first time, [barn owner] was there, and after some 'desensitization,' [owner] sat on Valora for the first time. (I'm not confident enough or fit enough to be the first person to sit on a young horse.) Once again Valora was a star. Of course she had no idea what she was supposed to do, but she didn't try to buck or bolt or anything. The 'worst' thing I saw her do was toss her head up and back when [owner] would pull on the rein because we had not yet taught her what that meant and she was confused about the pressure.

The next day I worked with Valora again and this time /I/ sat on her! She did as well for me as she'd done for [owner] and (with [owner]'s help) we managed to make one full lap around the ring before I got off.

After that I worked with Valora on the ground some more. I would put on the saddle and bridle, lunge her, and then spend some time standing next to her and taking turns putting pressure on one rein and then the other so that she would get the idea that the pressure meant she needed to turn her head. The next few times (maybe twice) anyone got on her, it was me that rode her. The only real 'incident' we ever had was on a windy day in a corner of the ring outside of which there is a trashcan. The edges of the bag were fluttering and spooked Valora. She did a little mini buck and trotted off a few stops but that was it.

A few weeks ago I had a ground driving session with Valora because she was still iffy on bit pressure, and so far that one session has seemed to help her a lot.

Then either last week or the week before [owner] worked with Valora. I wasn't there, but was told that it went well.

So far this week I've worked with Valora twice. Yesterday I got on while the camp kids were riding and Valora and I had a great ride. We walked several laps around the ring and she was much more responsive to the bit than before. She still stopped in places and it took a lot on encouragement (voice and legs) to move her forward, but she did a lot better than before.

Today, I think, marked a very important milestone. I got on Valora again (this time I didn't lunge her at all beforehand and she seemed a little surprised but not concerned) and started walking around. After a bit of walking I thought it was time to ask her to go a little faster. I applied leg pressure and used a lot of voice (Valora is fairly used to my voice commands because of all of the lungeing we've done). At first she didn't respond, as was expected because I'd never asked her for anything faster before, but after a minute or two of continuing leg pressure and voice she finally started to speed up. In the end we got three steps of trot on that first try! I didn't ask her to stop trotting, she just slowed once I let up on the pressure. After a few minutes I asked again and the second time we got five steps! We'll have to work more to get her more responsive and to get her to the point where she keeps moving even without continued pressure, but I'm really proud of her. She's also been doing weaving barrels at walk, which I think is really cool.

Oh, and [other person] got on Valora for the first time this morning. She got on after I'd finished, and Valora was good for her as well.

I can't wait to see how Valora does tomorrow. ;D

For me it's easy to see how smitten I was with this golden mare.

Well some time after the above quote (six months or so) the barn owner went on vacation and had two of the regular lesson kids and their mother taking care of the horses for the week. She had also given permission for the younger of the two girls to work with Valora.

I don't know where I was for that week but I wasn't at the barn. When I came back I saw exactly where events were heading. The younger girl wanted Valora.

Admittedly, I panicked and did not handle the situation properly. I called the barn owner and told her how attached I was to Valora and told her that if she would hold on to Valora for me I would buy Valora from her. (We had previously had this arrangement with my gelding, who I did purchase from her earlier that year and still own.) This in and of itself may not have been too awful, but I became very smug after the conversation thinking I had successfully averted disaster and staked my claim to Valora.

So younger girl goes to her mother and claims that I have told the barn owner not to let her ride Valora (which wasn't the case, and my panicked staking of claim came about partially because she had tried to tell me that I wasn't allowed to work with Valora*). This of course sent the mother into "mama bear" mode. The barn owner was unfortunately caught between us. She sat us both down separately and made it clear that the horse was still hers and anyone could work with her with permission.
*She also claimed that I hadn't actually done anything (training, work, etc) with Valora and that the only reason I'd been "allowed" to ride her was to make sure she was "safe" for the younger girl. It still enrages me that this claim was made, but I know that myself, the barn owner, and anyone else at the barn within that timeframe know the truth.

The next few months at the barn were very tense. November rolls around and the barn owner takes me aside one day. She tells me that the mother wants to purchase Valora for the younger girl for the holidays and asks if she has my permission to sell Valora to them. I will forever regret that I said yes. But at the time it seemed that the girl truly loved Valora and that they would make a decent, loving home for her.

So they buy Valora and give her to the girl for the holidays. I knew from that moment on that I wasn't even allowed to look at the horse. So I avoided them and her by any means necessary. It was one of the most painful times in my entire life having that mare there and knowing I wasn't allowed to even acknowledge her existence. But I didn't complain during that time because I didn't want to make things worse.

Shortly after the girl received Valora she decided she wanted to be a barrel racer and started working Valora on the barrel pattern and taking her to another barn for barrel lessons. (Keep in mind that at this point Valora had not yet turned four.) About six months after buying Valora the family decided to switch barns and go board at the place where the girl was taking barrel lessons (probably in part because they owed the barn owner several thousand dollars and had no way to pay her, but I didn't know that at the time).

So they switch barns and at least it's no longer painful for me to go ride at "my" barn and see my boy, but there's still a gaping hole in my heart that is now a freshly bleeding wound. While Valora had been there the wound had at least been packed with gauze and not actively gushing. But perhaps with her gone I could finally grieve and start to heal. It almost worked, for a bit.

That November - less than a year after they had purchased Valora - she was up for sale. I don't remember how much they were asking for her, but it was more than I could afford and I knew they would never sell her to me anyway. So I kept my peace and hoped that such a nice horse would find a lovely home with someone to love her. Or even a lesson barn with a lot of someones to love her. Time passed and I knew that the people no longer had her but did not know what had become of her.

To be entirely honest I still don't know what exactly happened to her but I have pieced a few things together. She was being sold because they were having trouble keeping her sound. I heard from three different sources (barn owner at the barrel racing barn (which I was told they were kicked out of before they sold her), the younger girl's older sister, and one other source that I know is reputable) that Valora developed navicular. At the time they were selling her she was about four-and-a-half with a lifelong, progressive condition, and continual soundness problems.

From there the story gets muddy. One source says that Valora was sold to a woman in a different part of the state for light trail riding. Another said that she was sold to a family for their young daughter. (Both of these stories were also told of the older daughter's TB mare, so I find them somewhat iffy.) The third story, from the most reputable source, is that she ended up at auction and was sold to a known meat buyer. Over the years I have considered reaching out to the meat buyer in question and asking if they know anything, but I've been nervous to do so because they have been the subject of some "exposes" and I don't want them to think I'm trying to trap them in anything when all I want is to know if Valora is alive.

I managed to find some closure when I met Valora's sire and saw so much of who she was in him. I even got to ride him and my gosh what an amazing animal he is. I can only imagine what sort of horse Valora would be right now if she'd truly gotten a chance to shine. And even now I look closely at every palomino horse I see just in case it could possibly be her.

Here are a slew of pictures of Valora. (Always looking for info if you happen to recognize her. )

Valora on arrival:


Photos from after she was sold to the younger girl:

[buzzy]

My story is interesting, to say the least. It all starts out with Star, a Thoroughbred mare that my parents bought for me as my first horse. She was around 30 years old at the time, and I got about six months of trail riding and beginner lessons out of her before I decided to retire her. She still lives happily on my ranch, and just turned 35. She's getting quite skinny now and I am starting to have to think about a tough choice . We also adopted a Morgan pony named Chance with Star, but he doesn't come into the picture until later. I decided I wanted to get into jumping and began riding at this barn a while away from my house. I enjoyed it, but the trainer wasn't the nicest, which ended up with me ultimately leaving that barn. I still didn't have a horse that I could ride, and with the economy the way it was a few years ago, my dad couldn't really afford to buy a new horse for me. I had met a lady at a community gathering, and she had told me all about her days of being a hunter jumper growing up. This lady told me all her experiences of being at the Mclay Finals in New York, to some barn brat stories. I knew I had a lot to learn from this lady, and she quickly became a huge mentor in my life. She even offered to let me ride one of her horses, a Quarter horse named Buzzy ( I bet yall see where this one is going xD). I loved Buzzy so much, and my neighbor knew it. She was really into the care and rehabilitation of OTTB's, and Buzzy wasn't really her type of horse, so she asked my mom if we would like to have Buzzy. Of course, my mom said yes, and that started a journey of jumping and trail riding and just overall fun with one of my heart horses. Buzzy and I just dinked around for a while, until the lady who gifted him to me, decided to buy some jumps for her pasture. I was involved in the process of choosing colors and what type of standards we wanted etc. At that point, I had moved trainers to one of the top Hunter Jumper barns in my state, and I loved it. But it was like an hour's drive from my house, and it made it really difficult to take me to lessons. So we looked to move trainers again, and unfortunately, it wouldn't be the last time xD. This new trainer was only a few minutes away from my school and I thought it was going to be perfect, but... it wasn't. The trainer was just a mean person too, who cussed me out, and made me publicly apologize for "catching a horse wrong". I was super embarrassed, to say the least, and at that moment I decided that maybe this whole jumping thing wasn't working out after all, and I decided to take a break and figure my life out. Of course, I left that other bad trainer and just kind of dinked around with Buzzy. Until, once again the lady who has gifted me with so much, suggested I try out Dressage, specifically because there was a lady five minutes from my house. She had taken a few lessons with the trainer and fell in love. I was really hesitant at first because I thought Dressage looked... super boring. Boy was I wrong. This is where Chance comes into the story. My pasture pet Morgan Pony who I was told was crazy and was unsafe, turned out to be just what I needed, and I started riding him and taking Dressage lessons on him. He was a difficult little pony...But he knew that I was giving him a second Chance ( Pun intended xD), and that horse took such good care of me. There were times that a huge storm would suddenly blow in and I had to rush to get home, and Chance knew that the weather had turned, and he would gallop with me down our dirt road, wind and leaves blowing in our faces, but he never batted an eye, he trusted me and I trusted him with my life. I was so amazed at our bond. Sometimes, I could see that our bond was even more than with Buzzy sometimes, but Buzzy still meant a lot to me, I was just in a different stage of my life. Chance and I enjoyed a year of learning the sport of Dressage and going to some shows together. I even began to work with Buzzy in Dressage and started wanting to explore taking him to shows as well. Then one summer evening, Chance and I had a lesson, but something was different. He was acting sluggish and wasn't cooling down properly. I was worried, and he continued to get worse. His belly had grown hard and distended, and he was dribbling urine out of his sheath. What made me most concerned... Was his back all a sudden became swayed. We took him to the emergency vet, who treated him for colic, which of course it wasn't because he had gut sounds. They let me take him home the next day, and of course, he got worse because I knew it wasn't colic. I took him to my normal vet who kept him for a week and monitored his pain. We think it was some sort of spinal cord/ collapsing whither sort of injury. This meant, my little pony that could, would be officially retired. It's really saddening because he has such a young mind and wants to do the work, but his body doesn't allow it. Then I had to start the process of looking for a new Dressage horse, which was a great experience for me and my family, who really haven't had to buy a nice horse to be used to take me through the levels. My trainer finds a 15-year-old Dutch Warmblood gelding, who apparently has a good bit of Dressage training. I test rode him and I loved him. I didn't really like the fact that he was a tobiano, because I knew I would have to clean all of that white before shows xD. But long story short I end up buying him and it has been a rough year. Lots of lies were told in the sale process, which lead to me really struggling. The horse that has was supposed to take me through the levels ended up being at the same level as Chance...yikes. It turns out Sully, was in a lot of pain. So we buy him a custom saddle for his back, get him hock and coffin joint injections, chiropractor adjustments, and massages. So currently, his pain is managed but boy, it's been a rough year, But I love Sully very much, and he has truly become my heart horse because he has taught me so much...That he's worth his weight in gold.Like all my horses have been. We even qualified for Regionals...Which I have always wanted to do. So yeah, that's my 7 almost 8-year riding career in a nutshell. xD I wish I knew how to attach photos because I would be showing off my babies xD.

[Tom]

Good stuff everyone! Keep your stories coming.

[Emlyn]

I don't have many since its been a while and my memory is very foggy but ill try my best!

1. I went on my first trail ride when I was in about 1st grade I rode a Quarter Horse named Iceman. Nothing very eventful happened on the trail but when the ride was over and I went to dismount but no one told me how. I had a memory of a family friend getting off her * so I was like "let me try this" well at the time I had short legs and attempted to step off the horse but fell and my foot was dangling from the stirrup lol.

2. My first experience Jumping was....Interesting....at the time I was in 3rd grade and riding a Quarter horse named Sherman. We started off by warming up by walking around the arena, It had been about 6 hours of walking and I got a bit bored and I guess Sherman sensed that I was bored and started cantering to a Jump and Jumped it. That same year we went on a trail ride about half way through it we were going up a hill and Sherman started trotting it, he was a small boy so I get why he did. Before we went I double checked the cinch and it was tight but the trail said other wise as we were going up the saddle started sliding to Sherman's left side and almost under him. Before I was completely under I squeezed my legs which stopped the saddle from sliding and pulled myself up. That same trail ride my friend was bucked off and fell into a stream lol

[Tom]