Please add your own stories about the horse you lost this year.
It was July 2008 when a tiny little chestnut colt with a white nose was born at the farm where I had my two horses boarded. I didn’t want another horse, and had plans to be a single horse owner for years after my second horse passed.
My friends and BOs ribbed me about buying the chestnut colt, and I made excuses like not being able to buy him if they gave him the wrong name, and there probably being too many zeros in his price. Despite my best intentions, the colt captured my heart, and he was all the things I had wanted in my next horse, and the numbers worked out, and suddenly I owned three horses.
Rory was a cute goofball, but also smart. He was food motivated and as a weanling had figured out how his own actions influenced the food rewards before I even considered clicker training. I used that food reward throughout his training. The first time I almost went over his head when he slammed the brakes on to look for his carrot after doing something very difficult and a little scary (first trot poles) I did wonder if I was creating a monster. The monster never manifested. Once Rory knew what the right answer was, praise just made him puff up and proudly carry on with whatever it was.
We did some shows. Breed shows as a foal - he got tired and had lying down nap outside the ring between classes at the first show. At three he did the first Cup qualifiers, and missed the second due to a minor strain. The next January he bucked me off, breaking my tailbone and knocking me out in the process.
It took a while for me to figure out that it was the saddle fit and/or placement that was his trigger. I learned to recognize when he said it was wrong before the bucking started, and he learned to trust me to get off and fix it. He bucked me off several times in the process. I got so in tune with him that other people watching couldn’t understand why I was dismounting and fussing with the saddle.
Years of on and off progress followed. Things would go well for 2-3 months, then the wheels would fall off and we’d work through problems for a month or two before repeating the process. When things were going well, Rory was all in, ready to do whatever thing we were going to do that day. He was really fun to ride and we did some dressage shows, scoring well over 70% in his First Level debut. I didn’t jump him as he was a bit of a klutz. We used to joke that every leg was going in a different direction.
He tended to be anxious, and his anxiety sent me off on a search for something, anything to help him. He made me a better horseman in so many ways.
I discovered Endurance riding, and because my older horse’s medication barred him from competition, I took the wrong horse. Who turned out to have the right stuff for the sport. Not something I expected at all. Rory did his second ever competition ride solo. It was also our first 25 mile ride, and the first solo trail ride off property. He was so good all day, taking every challenge in stride and going on. We had three good years, with eight rides at four events (Covid years limited competition) before the wheels fell off for the last time.
Even when the wheels fell off, and nothing was going right, Rory would come to me in the field, and he would try to do what I asked. Sometimes he just couldn’t manage it. But he was a nice horse to handle, and he was so loveable. Everyone liked him, and we got a lot of compliments from strangers.
The ulcers appeared early in 2022, and things weren’t going well. I had a sense there was something else going on that had caused the ulcers. That fall Rory went down in the trailer and shortly thereafter was diagnosed as neurological. Long term, always been neurological. The Wobbler’s diagnosis came in the spring of 2023. Even with this dire diagnosis, he taught me so much.
The diagnosis explained so much about the struggles we had over the years. His inability to cope with the smallest of imperfections in saddle fit were probably directly related to his neuro issues, being that one more thing added to everything he was coping with making the burden that day just too much to bear. The random body soreness occurrences were probably due to falls in the field.
Rory was supposed to be my partner for years after my older horse passed. We were supposed to have many more adventures together. In the end I let him go before his body failed and caused a catastrophic injury.
Run free, little white nose. You were loved. You are missed.
