Post by hayleyj on Jun 20, 2005 1:32:57 GMT -5
It was a week after my horse, Legend died, that we went to a local slaughter house and talked them out of slaughtering a young mare and a foal. We took them home over much debating and I was afraid to ever ride again. You see, me and Legend were like soul mates, we always did shows together, at least once a week most of the time even more, and Legend just tripped over her own feet and went face first into the dirt. It wouldn't have killed her if a man that got upset with my horse said that he was just going to work her, but instead beat her until she was too weak to do anything. He returned her to us weeks later, and said that she had an accident, but my father knew what had happened. Legend had died just two weeks before we got our new mare and colt. They were so precious and had not been fed for days. There was no way that this weak horse could be my show partner like Legend was. She was too weak. It would take years to get her back to health, or at least I thought. We nursed her and her colt back to health in just a couple of months. She was running around with happiness knowing that she was free from slaughter for now, and loved and taken care of. She was very fast on the track, and I decided to try her out one day. I worked her with my personal trainer, John every day. And soon enough she became my show partner, we started out with pleasure and then went up and up and up. She won or tied every race that she was put into. She knew how to push herself, and knew how to persevere. It was a wonderful feeling out there on the track racing with her. Until that one day when we were doing a pleasure show, and someone put a fake snake on the ground, and she HATES snakes. She spooked, threw me off and just kept running and running. That put me into a wheel chair, and that put Whisper in a spot where they would never let her race again. Thankfully my dad let me keep her. And It's been five years since that accident, and shes sick now. But she's getting better. Snopper, her colt, is the father of a wonderful baby girl, and her name is Secret Splendor. I look from my deck out into where the horses are grazing, hoping that someday I will once again be able to ride my horses again, and to leave my wheel-chair behind and do something that anyone else that is normal can do, to do something that most kids in wheel-chairs only dream of doing, and that is how I came to be at praying hands ranch, they helped me accomplish my dreams, and feel like a normal person when I'm mounted up on Norman, my favorite horse.