Several years ago now I had to put my OTTB mare to sleep. After a few years of strategically trying to off herself, she diabolically developed the rarest form of cancer a horse can get. At the time even the vet didn’t believe it. For more than a year I resisted looking at sale ads. My heart was still stinging but eventually in to my life came another OTTB. He was the opposite of my mare, small and quiet he was always the very last horse in from a trail ride as he perpetually didn’t believe in going anywhere fast.
We dabbled in eventing but his feet always held us back. Like a lot of Thoroughbreds his feet were very flat and thin soled. I learned very quickly that shoes weren’t an option and he would get sore if I rode him without some sort of support. I got him hoof boots but we could not compete in a lot of things in them and if I didn’t put them on just right, with the right amount of sports tape for grip they would come off no matter how well fitted they were.
He and I entered a period of unhappiness. He wanted just to be a trail horse and I wanted to compete. The other facet to this story was the other horse in my pasture. My husband, Bless His Heart, loved Appaloosas. Which I wouldn’t have had a problem with if both of the Appys he’d brought in to our lives at various points hadn’t tried to kill me. In the case of his gelding, the most recent and last Appaloosa I will ever allow on my farm, he tried to kill me on multiple occasions and my daughter twice. My husband never believed it when I told him of the latest attempt on my life. I was pricing out Gopro’s so I could prove it when my husband who had changed jobs decided he should sell his Appaloosa. Thank you sweet baby Jesus.
So where you may ask is this story going? A huge case of emotional burnout with horses. It wasn’t that I didn’t want horses in my life. I just wanted a horse that I could connect with. I sent my OTTB gelding off to new adventures because neither of us was happy. I decided that maybe not riding for a few years while a young horse grew up wouldn’t be such a torment. So I went looking for an outside of the box, yet atheletic prospect. After having two OTTBs, my mare who hated leaving the farm for anything and the gelding who was slow and quiet but whose feet wouldn’t hold up had made me leary of another OTTB.
I decided, because I’d loved my daughter’s Welsh pony so much to get an adult sized Welsh, specifically a Section D. When I started looking I soon realized that even a weanling was out of my price range. I did find, however, a truly amazing woman, now a good friend, who bred not only Section D’s but Section D Warmblood crosses. She had a soon to be weanling filly who was a Belgian Warmblood and Section D cross. She had originally been reserved by a buyer but the buyer backed out. The breeder and I struck a deal, then my husband and fate stepped. My husband wanted me to at least go out and see this baby horse before I brought it home. Which I did that fall. I also got to meet and cuddle all the other babies from that year, the three breeding stallions including my new baby’s sire (They were hands down the sweetest boys) and all the broodmares. I spent a joyous hour meeting my filly’s dam, an enormous Belgian Warmblood mare that I instantly fell in love with. Right there in that pasture I told my new friend that if this mare, my filly’s mom ever needed a home that the breeder should contact me first. That moment right there, even though I wouldn’t know it for three years, would change my life.
This past January my breeder friend contacted me and asked if I would be interested in buying Remmi, my filly’s dam. I had just started to feel the riding bug again after an over two year hiatus. My filly, who was happily living her best not quite three year old life with my daughter’s sassy pony, wouldn’t be ready for any sort of serious riding work for at least another year. I longed to compete again so my friend and I struck another deal and I made the arrangements to have Remmi shipped to me from the mid-west. It would be a few months before everything aligned for Remmi to arrive at my farm but I got excited again.
Yet as I paid the shipper my anxiety started to settling in. I had jumped without thinking things all the way through with a horse several times before and while I’d had moments of happiness with those horses there had been more frustration and heartache than good times. So even as Remmi was stepping on the trailer to come to me I was laying awake in my bed wondering if I’d just made a huge mistake. Remmi had been backed as a two year old but aside from that had done nothing but be a pasture pet and mom to two foals. Had I just made a really horrible mistake?
On a chilly night in April the semi-hauler horse trailer pulled up at the end of my driveway. The shippers and I checked paperwork, I handed over a leadline and they disappeared within. Remmi stepped carefully down in the dark of my driveway and was handed to a virtual stranger. She walked calmly down my driveway in through my pitch black pasture and in to a strange barn with horses she didn’t know. This mare who I had met for an hour three years prior never put a foot wrong, never twitched an ear or gave me the slightest rise in my heartrate.
I took a leap but this time it was a good one. Remmi is the sweetest girl and she healed parts of me that I didn’t know were broken. I sat on her for what for her was the first time in nine years and then right after she gave my daughter a leadline ride. She isn’t perfect, she’s broken quite a few fence boards, bent one of my gates when she decided she was done with the bugs and would rather be in the barn and jumped out, hitting it with her rear legs. She thinks stall guards are a suggestion and stalks me to the feed room twice a day to supervise the making of her dinner.
Some day this fall when the weather isn’t so hot and sweaty I hope she and I will enter the show ring in whatever disciplin she wants to do but for now she is healing my bruised and battered heart with every nicker, nudge for cuddes and every begging eye for more slices of apple.
