It all started with a look

As soon as the papers are finalized, I am the owner of a new Walker mare. She is six years old, and with pads nearly 17.1hh, with legs that go on forever. Jube has very old eyes, even compared to my 20 y/o mares, and has been through quite a lot for her young years. She has been starved, neglected, abused, and ignored, and has still maintained a wonderful presence.

The man who owned her before the guy I bought her from starved this huge mare down to being over 100lbs underweight. She was fed low grade pellets once a day and alfalfa every other day if she was lucky. Jube was only ever touched to be pushed aside to feed her a little, and when she was trained. She was stalled from the moment she was weaned, was fed that same ration that kept her so thin until she was sold to Mr. G.

Now Mr. G is a sweet enough old man. He has been a used car salesman, among other things, for upwards of 40 years and is pretty big in the Walker world. Mr. G lives down the street from me and my dad and I took him up on his offer to go look at a truck and trailer he had for sale. So early yesterday we packed up the Yukon and headed down to Bowdon, GA, which is not the end of the earth, but you can see it from there. We arrived to a pretty nice, large barn with a 35ft center aisle that the horses were trained on. Mr. G and his daughter showed me their show horses, only a few of which were mares, all very sleek and black, gorgeous and well taken care of. After an hour of looking at the truck/trailer, geldings, golf cart and building, my dad was wrapping up things with the barn manager and I was taking a final look around.

This is where things tend to get a bit mystical. I was petting a particularly large gelding (He had to have been nearly 18hh on pads) over his stall door near the far end of the barn when I felt this very strong urge to turn around. I fought it for a few moments before giving in. In a sea of black noses poking out over stall doors and through bars, way down at the other end and several stalls away from other horses was a pink nose resting against the lock on the door. I stood there for a second, but thought it was just another gelding, so I returned to the larger guy next to me who was demanding to be scratched behind his ears. A few minutes later the asst trainer walked down to pink nose’s stall and yelled “C’mon mare!” while opening her stall door. He obviously intended her to walk behind him, leadless like a trained dog, which she did until we met each other’s eyes. I haven’t the slightest clue how long we were there, but it was long enough that the trainer had already gotten to the other end of the barn with her all the way back at her stall. He yelled for her to come on again, which broke our concentration and she trotted up behind him and into her cross ties.

At this point I had no idea she was even for sale. I asked the trainer her name, who she was out of, general stuff. While I’m standing in front of her she did the one thing that every “soulmate” horse I have ever bought has done, she takes my entire messy bun in her mouth and starts trying to groom my hair. Instead of tacking her up, the trainer just sat there and watched a girl and a young mare rub and groom each other for a little with the most amazed look on his face. You know, that look that says “Poor girl, she must be a little touched in the head.” That’s a very familiar look to me, which I know is surprising to you.

Finally he started trying to tack her up, which was met with a sudden and completely unexpected bite in the dead center of the trainer’s back. He fought to get near her without being bitten for nearly 20 minutes before he relented and let me do it, after which she acted as if I had done this to her every day since she was born. After this he rode her for a bit, I took a quick turn (I have no idea of what I’m doing on a performance horse) and she did all the work for me. She had this look on her face whenever he stopped for a moment that said “I’m not going to put up with this for much longer.”

We wrapped up the riding and she returned with only a voice command to the cross ties. I stood there, washing her down and half grooming her, for nearly half an hour. Eventually we had to leave, and as I was walking out of the place I took one look back at her, and noticed something in the groomsman’s hand. I started walking quickly to her and noticed a strong smell of kerosene and something else I can’t quite put my finger on. She was standing there, head down, a near defeated look in her eyes until she saw me again. I made up more crap on the spot to keep the chemicals off her legs than I think I’ve ever had to. I’m honestly not even sure what I said, but I managed to keep it off of her for at least that day. I’ve never felt so horrible leaving a horse in a place in my life.

What has amazed me about this mare is that she has gone through all of this, but still holds herself and behaves with more grace and geniality than I could ever have expected. She is arriving here hopefully next Saturday, but nowhere soon enough for my liking. I’m going to be keeping updates on her here, and hopefully I’ll have a better picture of her up soon. Any advice is greatly appreciated!