It’s hard to think about the way my colt’s herd lived and died all that time before he came to me.
But the sad truth is, that kind of neglect is commonplace.
Somewhere near you, just outside of town, down that side road, around that bend, behind those trees, barely out of sight, it’s likely happening right now, to horses and many other kinds of animals.
My friend *Sandy helps run a nonprofit that rehabilitates abused, neglected, and abandoned horses, and she never has a slow day.
It was Sandy and her volunteers who worked with law enforcement to rescue the colt’s family and dozens of other horses owned by the same individual in several different counties, Sandy who called one morning that summer to tell me there were lots of youngsters in this particular herd, and did I want one?
Did I?
Once upon a time everybody needed a horse, the way most people need cars today.
Now no one does, and yet. Some of us insist on burdening ourselves with the care and feeding and cost and cleaning and tending and training of this obsolete form of transportation.
Some of us can’t get enough of it.
And maybe because there’s no real reason to have any horses, it can be hard to recognize when you have too many horses.
Horse ownership somehow tends to create a cascade of reasons for owning more horses.
I call it the horse-owners equine-additional defense cascade, or HEAD-Case.
The symptoms are most pronounced in folks who keep horses on their own property.
Here’s how it works.
Say you get your first horse because you want to ride. But horses don’t like to live alone, so you get a companion, too.
Then that second horse melts down if it’s left behind when you ride off the property. So you get a third to keep it calm.
Then the spouse or the friend or the neighbor or the kid decide they want to ride trails with you, so now you need four horses, maybe five.
The kid outgrows the pony, or a grandkid needs a pony, or your mount gets injured or old and has to be retired, or you take up a new discipline for which your existing horse is not suitable, or the kid does, or–
–typically, all of the above–
and before you know it you’ve got yourself a proper herd.
There’s even a T-shirt commemorating this phenomenon. It features the solid silhouettes of four horses followed by the ghostly outline of a fifth and reads
I DO NOT NEED ANOTHER HORSE
I DO NOT NEED ANOTHER HORSE
I DO NOT NEED ANOTHER HORSE
I grew up with horses, so I have always been keenly aware of how much work and resources it takes to keep them healthy and happy.
Still, whenever someone asks me if I want another horse, especially a horse in need, my immediate and heartfelt and foolish response is always: YES!
Countermanding that reflex are the horror stories I’ve heard and boneyard scenes I’ve witnessed through more than ten years of working with rescued horses.
Each time, I wonder why people would get animals only to let them suffer.
But if I try, I can imagine how it happens all too easily.
In most neglect cases, the owners are well-meaning animal lovers like me who just didn’t know when to quit or how to ask for help.
All it takes is a job loss, a health crisis, a family feud, a catastrophic accident, a bout of depression, a divorce, a new baby, an ailing elder, and suddenly or slowly there’s not enough money or time or strength to take care of all the horses.
The owner of the colt’s family was an extreme case, a genuine hoarder who bought hundreds of animals destined for slaughter with money raised online.
This person wanted to save the horses, but had no land to put them on, no help taking care of them, not enough money to feed them, not enough skill to train them, and not enough sense to separate the mares from the stallions so at least they couldn’t reproduce and thereby compound the problem.
Hoarding is considered a mental illness, yet that impulse to help is the same as my own, and resides on the same continuum that inspired the T shirt slogan.
It’s a cautionary tale for us all.
Since moving to my farm a few years back, I’d capped my herd number at five.
That’s the number the farm can accommodate: there are five stalls in my barn, five turnout paddocks with shelter, and five acres of grass.
But there’s only one of me: the person who mucks, feeds, waters, turns out, turns in, grooms, trains, trims feet, and pays for it all, day after day, week after week, year after year.
I’m healthy, organized, and compensated well enough to keep a toehold in the middle class .
Still, at times, all my responsibilities on the farm have stretched me pretty thin.
The decision to get a young horse felt especially risky to me.
My horses are family, and the commitment is for life.
A horse can live 30 years or more, and I’m already pushing 60.
Until the colt came along, I’d brought home only older equines, on the reckoning that they were less likely to outlast me.
I can’t be sure I’ll live long enough to honor my commitment to a youngster.
So why, oh why, was I looking for one?
Because my fascination with horses and horsemanship was only deepening as I aged; because I’d just lost a beloved senior member of my herd, so there was room; because the elder ladies in my family tend to live well into their 90s; because I wanted to experience a life-long relationship with a horse; because I’d recently trained a mature Quarter Horse mare to be my riding partner, and was eager for a more advanced project; because starting from scratch with a completely unhandled baby horse was the most amazing adventure I could think to undertake in my remaining years; because I’d regret it forever if I didn’t try; because if I was going to do it, I had better get to it sooner rather than later–
–that right there was my own personal, customized, made-to-order HEAD-Case.
And since any responsible horse owner would want to spend at least a little time gentling a baby in its first few months of life, I knew that, if I wanted an unhandled horse, I’d probably end up with one that had belonged to an irresponsible owner.
I just hope I never become an irresponsible owner myself.
Sandy knew about my search for a young horse to gentle; that’s why she was calling.
She’d filled the solemn silence on my end of the line with some background about the herd and the procedures for adoption.
Time was of the essence, she said.
The hoarder was threatening legal challenges and had been known to abscond with starving horses in the middle of the night.
There was no way to secure the herd at its present location.
OK, I told her.
And I went to take a look.
I spent more than an hour visiting among the dozens of weak, bony creatures that seemed the mere shadows of horses before I noticed the tall, bold colt begging for treats in the smallest pen.
I knew he was mine the moment I saw him, but could not have explained why.
That’s usually how it is when I make these sorts of choices.
There were 39 other worthy horses in that group who desperately needed homes.
I put my marker on just the one.
It was a wholly unsatisfying show of restraint and still, possibly, one horse too many.
*I’ve changed some minor details of the rescue to protect the anonymity of the persons and animals involved
The New Colt 