Paint horse people – who is this horse?
Apr 10 2008
I was sent here by a reader to comment on the rescue (yeah, probably the words “just saved from the kill buyer” and “stallion prospect” don’t belong on the same page) but this is more interesting to me.
http://mysite.verizon.net/lisagrossi25/id18.html
Edited to add: OK, we’ve confirmed that this horse really WAS an APHA Reserve Word Champion. He has 430 points. And yet, he wound up at a rescue looking as he did on the right and lame.
So here are my questions:
1. As a horse, what do you have to DO to earn a comfortable retirement? 430 points is not enough?
2. Out of his eight previous owners, are any of you decent human beings who are going to find out about this and step up to give him that comfortable retirement? Any of you at all?
3. Everybody bitches about the racing industry discarding stakes winners, but how many BIG TIME show winners like this guy wind up in bad places? I want to hear your stories. Who have you come across and what were the circumstances?
One comment to “Paint horse people – who is this horse?”
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When I went out with my trainer/friend to learn how to train young horses we came across an Oldenburg gelding who was sweet as can be, well put-together, and had great manners in his stall, paddock, and in the arena. He was at a barn we were training a few young horses at, and the owner of the fillies we were training said the Oldenburg was a hunter/jumper who was an “insurance kill (?)”. Said he was dumped by the show family because he kept coming up lame, and replaced by another horse. I do not know his show family, and was appalled that someone would dump a horse as well behaved and as well put together as he was. (This was back when I was still only 1 or 2 years into my horse experience, now I am 6 years in). I wanted to pay for a vet to come out and look at him to see why he was always lame. I couldn’t feel any hotspots in his legs, his back wasn’t stiff, and his gaits were fine. My trainer didn’t see anything overly wrong with Donnie (The Oldenburg) and presumed he was probably trained wrong, didn’t have his feet done regularly, and just wasn’t maintained like he should have been.
Donnie was one of many horses I wanted to pull out of that barn and rescue. The filly I was teaching manners to was another. Inexperienced owners, bad fences, terribly unkempt stalls…at 2 years into horse training I could see all this, and many of these owners claimed “a lifetime with horses”.
Why do any horses get dumped? Irresponsibility is why.