In Memory of…

We have had some amaz­ing hors­es in our lives — some were my per­son­al mounts, some were les­son hors­es that took care of young and inex­pe­ri­enced rid­ers. Some came to us after hav­ing lov­ing homes before we got them, oth­ers were res­cues from bad cir­cum­stances. We will nev­er for­get these hors­es and want to have them remem­bered here… I am in the process of col­lect­ing pic­tures of these hors­es — some of them were before the days of dig­i­tal photography, 

Andreas­Gor­geous (Andy)

Andy was one of our foun­da­tion les­son hors­es. I bought her from a train­er that still races hors­es in Alber­ta, waaaay back in 2023. She was a spicy red head, that taught every­one how to ride an off the track thor­ough­bred. She was always the dom­i­nant per­son­al­i­ty in her herd. In the fall of 2023 Andy had an unde­fined infec­tion caus­ing huge issues with swelling in her legs and wonky blood work. We sus­pect­ed there were major issues going on with her, and rather than forc­ing her to take meds mul­ti­ple times a day (this horse hat­ed get­ting med­ica­tions more than any­thing in the world) we opt­ed to euthanize.

Thank You Uncle (barn name Trinket):

Trin­ket was a 16 hh grey thor­ough­bred mare. She moved to our prop­er­ty  quite a few years ago, on tri­al while we decid­ed if we want­ed to buy her or not. A stu­dent did buy her, and had her until she need­ed to move to the States. At that point we pur­chased Trin­ket and she became one of our trea­sured les­son hors­es. Trin­ket was a fan­tas­tic teacher for learn­ing can­ter, and can­ter­ing to jumps. She had a spe­cial skill of work­ing on the lunge line with a rid­er. We could take reins and stir­rups away, and Trin­ket would just do what­ev­er the per­son on the end of the rope said.

Trin­ket had melanomas removed just before mov­ing here. Ear­ly in 2022 they reap­peared, and we were get­ting symp­toms of can­cer that had spread. Mid sum­mer we found a lymph node that was appear­ing to be can­cer­ous, as well as sig­nif­i­cant weight loss. We did every­thing we could for her, but we had to give up when the cold weath­er came — Trin­ket was euth­a­nized mid Novem­ber 2022. She was 20 years old.

Nor­man:

Nor­man was orig­i­nal­ly res­cued at auc­tion by his pre­vi­ous own­er. He was born to a PMU farm moth­er, and was con­sid­ered a waste prod­uct of the process. He was a Bel­gian crossed with a quar­ter horse — very typ­i­cal breed­ing for PMU farms.

Beth took him as a wean­ling and raised him to learn the ropes of being arid­ing horse. At 5 years old I was asked to come teach the green horse how to do basic dres­sage and jump­ing. I did my job with Nor­man and he went on with his fam­i­ly to do many oth­er things. He returned to my life as a teenag­er when the adult daugh­ter was no longer rid­ing him. I took him as a lease sit­u­a­tion for sev­er­al years, and when Beth asked if I want­ed to buy him I asked “how much do I make the cheque for?” 

Trend­set­ter (barn name Snoopy):  Snoopy was my first horse, and a chal­leng­ing soul. He taught me how to ride and devel­op a rela­tion­ship with a horse. He was an appen­dix (QH/TB cross), bay with a neat star and no oth­er mark­ings. He was very qui­et, but quite spooky — I learned how to land rolling so I did­n’t break any­thing (on me, or the jumps!). He was sold on to some­one else when I was in uni­ver­si­ty, and although I don’t know the details about his end I do know that sim­ple math means he is no longer alive. He was the name­sake of both my hus­bands com­pa­ny, and our stable.

Rid­ers Choice (barn name Choice):  This mare was one that I bought as a 2 year old. She was a warmblood/thoroughbred cross, stun­ning to look at with a pow­er­ful jump, and an aggres­sive atti­tude toward her work. She was a beau­ti­ful red chest­nut with a heart shaped star. When she was about 6 years old we dis­cov­ered that she had Wob­bler’s Syn­drome and had to be euthanized.

Breezy:  Breezy was an amaz­ing les­son horse that would care for her rid­ers like they were her own foals. She would tell me by refus­ing to do some­thing if she felt the rid­er was not ready. Many rid­ers were told that they need­ed to wait to do a new skill because “Breezy says your not ready”. The 2 times that I made her do it any­ways the rid­ers fell off. After that I always lis­tened when she said not to do it. Breezy worked until she was 24 years old, retired to a stu­dents acreage and enjoyed 2 years of eat­ing. Dur­ing a fun­ny win­ter with a lot of freezing/thawing spells she slipped on the ice and broke her humerus bone — it is a weight bear­ing bone and there is no way to sup­port it so that it can heal in an ani­mal of that size. She was euthanized.

Din­ers Pret­ty Pen­ny (barn name Dinah):  Dinah sucked as a race­horse, thank­ful­ly for us, because she loved being a les­son horse. She was an off the track thor­ough­bred that nev­er real­ly had any inter­est in run­ning. She was a very good jump­ing horse, and stayed qui­et with begin­ners, only show­ing us speed once in a while when we went to shows. She had a chron­ic prob­lem with one of her feet — she had a crack that start­ed at the coro­net band and grew down­ward — it did­n’t mat­ter what type of treat­ment we tried, noth­ing helped. Even­tu­al­ly the crack start­ed to go hor­i­zon­tal­ly and we start­ed get­ting abscess­es that we could­n’t stay ahead of — we had to make the deci­sion to put her down before she was in distress.

Mer­cedes:  Mer­cedes was only with us for a short 6 months. She picked up stran­gles when we were board­ing at a dif­fer­ent facil­i­ty, and was one of the 10% that devel­oped bas­tard stran­gles. We treat­ed her for 3 months with­out any suc­cess, and watched her weight go down to a fright­en­ing lev­el. We final­ly had to give up so that she was­n’t suf­fer­ing any more.