*she made me polish my own boots and clean my own tack before every show

*when I told her not to stand by the ring whispering “keep your heels down, keep your head up” she was quiet (most of the time.)

*when I won my first blue ribbon, she was there standing proudly at the side of the ring taking my picture.

When I was 12

*she took over the Pony Club, and made us all learn the finer points of stable management, and the finer points of personal management (pack your deodorant, don’t forget your toothbrush, you really need to get the straw out of your hair and the green smudge off those white breeches.)

*Every Christmas, she took an entire unruly flock of us Christmas Caroling on horseback. On the 4th of July, she taught us how to make red, white, and blue pom-poms to braid into our horses hair.

*She didn’t say a word when I went off course for the umpteenth time and got eliminated and I cried in the car all the way home.

*She shrugged when I limped into the house telling her I’d fallen off and banged up my knee, head, arm, shoulder, etc., sighed a bit, and said, “Do you need to go to the emergency room? You look ok to me…”

*she took ten dollar bills out of the grocery money so that I could get a new hunt coat.

*she consoled all of the horse girls in the neighborhood, nursing them through heartbreaks and mishaps, equine and otherwise.

*she explained to me that money could buy more expensive horses, but it could not buy hard work, determination and heart.

when I was 16:

*she kissed me and told me good luck before I went out on cross-country, never once telling me that she was afraid.

*she she hitched the trailer and went on all of the long haul drives with me, even when it was a hundred degrees outside and we had to turn on the heater every time we went up a steep grade so the car wouldn’t overheat.

*She cheered when I won and shrugged when I lost and on the way home, no matter what the result, she listened to my blow-by-blow of every approach fence and landing in the most excruciating possible detail. (and then after half a stride, I checked once and shifted my weight, and then, we took four strides up the hill…)

When I was 18:

*she told me that nothing, not even horses, was as important as getting an education.
*she watched me pack my suitcases and leave home without a backward glance.
*she finally started riding a lot herself, never once complaining about all of the years she was so busy taking care of me that she hardly found time to ride herself.
*She kept my horses at home, retired, for close to thirty years until the last one died peacefully of old age, and she mourned when that last horse was gone.

When I was grown:

*She opened her barn to an old retired horse so that he could grow old in piece.

If you know someone like this, please share and wish her a wonderful and Happy Horse-Mother’s Day!

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That night, I got a phone call from a man named Roy Haupt. Roy was in his eighties, and lived in Arizona, but he had a story he was dying to tell me.

According to Roy, back in the 1940s, he had lived on a farm outside Kennett Square, Pennsylvania. I place I knew well as I used to live there myself.

Roy had a gray mare who was a full sister to the racehorse Phar Lap. That gray mare threw a gray foal, half Thoroughbred, nice temperament, but the foal had a problem: once he got to be a yearling, he would jump out of his pastures, no matter how tall the fences, and run away. Roy decided he couldn’t keep a horse that he couldn’t keep in the pasture, and so he took him down to Amish country and sold him for $25.

About nine or ten years later, Roy read an article about Harry de Leyer and Snowman, and he was absolutely convinced that this was his jumping yearling, now a famous champion.

I listened to Roy, and I’ll admit I was intrigued– it’s not far from Kennett Square out to Amish Country, and the dates seemed more or less right, but I talked to Harry about it, and we decided it was really just too hard to figure out.

Well, about a month ago, I was doing a booksigning out in Carroll County, Maryland when a woman approached me. She was Roy Haupt’s niece. In her hand, she had a photo of a gray mare with about an eight-year-old boy seated on his back. That was Roy. and next to the mare was another gray– and according to Haupt family legend, this was the jumping gray who got sold into Amish Country.

Well, you know how horse stories are, and so we’ll probably never know the truth, but go ahead and look at the picture and see what you think.

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Being an author is a pretty good gig. You get to work at home spending hours and days thinking about things that you love, and then you get to go out and meet fans whose lives have been touched by your words.

There is an almost magical connection that happens, when a reader whom you’ve never met reads the words you written and your reader laughs and cries, and you’ve made a friend across distance and time.

Fabulous things can happen for authors, and doors can open that they never expected.

But all authors have to start somewhere, and the place where most start is in obscurity.

Like most authors, I have some painful memories about how difficult it was to get my start. Among the worst, was my very first book signing, at a now defunct Borders bookstore. My proud mother was coming along to watch her daughter’s first exciting appearance as a published author.

But on the way to the store, my baby fell asleep, and so my mom decided to stay in the car until he woke up. As I passed through the swinging doors, alone, I noticed that there was no sign anywhere announcing my presence. The harried bookstore clerk at first seemed confused about who I was or why I was there. My stomach started to churn but I tried to convince myself that somewhere a group of expectant readers would be waiting.

He led me back to a remote corner of the store, near the automotive and train section and pointed to a small podium with a teetering stack of books on it. A few big leather chairs were occupied by men reading magazines. The young clerk shooed them away. “There’s a book talk here,” he said. Once they shuffled away, it was just me, a pile of books, and a few empty leather chairs. Nobody even walked by.

I stared at the pile of books and the books stared back at me as the minutes then hours slowly ticked by. I’m not sure how long I would have stayed there. Perhaps they would have forgotten me entirely and I would have still been standing there when they turned out the lights and locked the doors.

Sometimes, you just need a mom to get involved, and that’s what happened. My baby woke up. My mom came in pushing the stroller. She looked at the empty chairs, noticed I was fighting back tears and said, “you are not staying here one minute longer.” When I tried to find the bookstore worker who had shown me where to go, I was told he had left and the people on staff didn’t even realize that I was there. I had sold zero books and spoken to no one. That was my first introduction to life as a “famous author.”

The second and final stop on my micro book tour was the bookstore where I actually shopped, an amazing haven for book lovers, a sprawling, lovely, book-smelling, eclectic, wonderful place. A place where the booksellers always said hello, and told me what to buy for my father, and picked out books that I had never seen or heard of but grew to love.

I loved the bookstore, but I faced the prospect of my second book signing with soul-wrenching dread. It’s hard to describe how agonizing the two hours spent in Borders had been. I was prepared for more of the same.

But instead, I found chairs set up in rows, and the extraordinary folk at the bookstore had gotten out a crowd. They brought wine, and baked cookies. I can’t stress enough that they did not do this because they were expecting to sell a whole bunch of books or make a whole lot of money.

They did it because they were my neighbors, and because they knew my name. They knew that a book about the Civil War might be a good holiday gift for my father, and that my mom liked a certain kind of book club book. They knew that a fledgling author can’t draw a crowd, but that someday that same author might become a bestseller. They had my back.

I am a big believer in supporting small business. I like to know the people with whom I’m doing business. I find that they tend to treat me better and do me favors. Doing business with people I know helps me feel more connected and less alienated; more like I’m part of something; less like I’m a cog in a giant mechanical wheel.

And nowhere is this more important than in a bookstore. It’s hard to think of a product where you need more help and hand-holding to figure out what is inside. It’s hard to imagine a more intimate connection than the one forged through a shared love of words and ideas.

At Chester County Books and Music I found gifts for my children and parents, I found companionship and a place to discuss books even if I didn’t want to buy anything at all, and I found support for my budding career.

And I’m not the only one. There are hundreds of other authors who got their start the exact same way.
That is why we are saying THANK YOU tonight.

Come on out, today, Friday, November 23rd at 6 pm. Browse their bookshelves, and most of all, meet a whole lot of authors. Grab dinner in the Magnolia Grill. You’ll have fun, and you’ll be glad you did.

Cheers!

Click here for details about this fun event.

So, I still remember the moment when I came across the picture that would change my life: an old black and white photo of a horse jumping over another horse.  That picture led me to the story of Snowman and Harry, which in turn led me on one of the most extraordinary journeys of my life.

That day, I did not know where my fascination with the picture would lead me. But what I soon learned was that a simple act of kindness and compassion can ripple out in the world in unexpected and wonderful ways for years and years to come.

On a snowy February day, more than 50 years ago, a young Dutch immigrant took pity on a bedraggled white horse who had already been loaded onto the slaughterhouse truck.

He paid eighty dollars for the horse and took him home.

This story could easily have gone the other way.  Then man could have turned his back on the big gray gelding with the small ears and gentle eyes.

A single animal, among so many others in need.  What difference could it possibly make?

But somehow, it made a difference.  Not just to one horse, and one man, but to so many others, an echo of compassion that continues even until today.

Over the last few years, I’ve met so many extraordinary people who are doing the same thing every day:  people who volunteer selflessly at horse welfare organizations across the country, people who volunteer at therapeutic riding programs; people who spend long volunteer hours using their expertise to address the plight of unwanted horses. I’ve met people who are caring and feeding for older horses, sometimes at great personal expense to themselves.  People of all ages doing small acts of kindness every single day.  Not people you read about in the paper, or see on TV.  Not people who become famous, or win prizes. Not people who have lots of money.  Ordinary folk just like you and me who are asking for nothing in return.

So today, on Thanksgiving, I take this moment to be grateful for every single person who has been touched by Snowman’s story. Every person, through the years who has taken a moment to do the compassionate thing, to benefit an animal, a living being creature who has nothing to give in return but love.

Sometimes I imagine the moment when Snowman’s eyes met Harry’s as the center of a circle, and radiating out from that circle are a thousand, maybe a million small acts of compassion in an expanding circle that moves out through time.

Have you been touched by Snowman’s story?  Have you remembered to do something selfless and kind?  Are you part of the enormous unsung army of people who are doing something every single day without asking for any return or recognition?

To all of you, I send grateful thanks.  You are part of an vast silent movement all paying it forward.

Happy Thanksgiving.

So began the first story that I almost published, and with it, the story of how the seeds of a dream, once planted, can grow tenaciously, even in the shade.

I was a senior in college, enrolled in a seminar called “The Craft of the Writer.”  My professor, John Hersey,  a distinguished man of letters, had won a Pulitzer Prize for “Hiroshima,” his searing account of the aftermath of the dropping of the nuclear bomb.

Mr. Hersey was a patient man, in his late sixties or early seventies, tall and slim with gray hair.  He was kind, and always thought of something nice to say, but he didn’t seem particularly impressed with my work.  During each class, he would choose the work of one or two students to read and discuss, and mine was never chosen.

He encouraged me to write about my passions.  I felt inadequate.  I was young and did not know much about the world.  The only thing I knew a lot about was horses. So I wrote a story called, “The Starting Box,” about a young three-day eventer who is next up to ride the cross-country course when she is delayed due to a serious injury on the course. It was about what it feels like to be terrified, and about what drives a competitor to compete in spite of the fear.

To ride horses is to understand and accept that nothing is certain.  In the 1970s in California, when safety vests had not yet been invented, safety harnesses for riding helmets snapped out for when you didn’t feel like using them, and course design was much more rudimentary, the danger confronted on the courses was real. We rode the old long-form courses then– roads and tracks, then steeplechase, then roads and tracks again, then cross-country. The courses were long, the fences trappy, the terrain  often iffy.

You had to be careful.  Sometimes, being careful wasn’t enough.

I’ll never forget the day that I met Mr. Hersey in his office to discuss the new story, my thrill when he said  “I think this is good enough to be published…”  I asked him for suggestions and he suggested Sports Illustrated.  Terrified, I carefully typed the manuscript and sent it to an address in New York City that I’d gotten from a directory in the library.

Just a few short weeks later, a letter arrived at my parents’ house in California.  The editor wanted my story!  I was twenty-one years old, just days past graduation, and I was going to be published in a national magazine.    I was going to be a writer, and I was getting my first break writing about something that I knew and loved– horses. I was in Philadelphia, at a training camp before my imminent departure to the Peace Corps. My mom called me long-distance to share the good news.

But, the savvy reader will notice that this contract is unsigned.  I was already out of the country when the editor called my home phone number and got my mom on the phone.  The editor was checking the facts and wanted to talk to me.  My mom explained that I was in Africa, and not reachable by phone, but maybe she could help out, she said.

The editor started asking her questions– do you know where this event was located?  What month, what year?

My mom hesitated.  “Gosh, I don’t know,” she said.  “She’s competed at events all up and down the West Coast…she probably combined features of all of them…it’s not a true story of course.”

What I did not know was that Sports Illustrated did not publish fiction.  I guess the story sounded so real that they couldn’t imagine I had made it up. I had never been stranded in the starting box while I waited for a fatal accident to be cleared from the course, but I had been in the starting box plenty of times, and I knew what the fear of facing the unknown felt like.

And thus ended my writing career.  I spent three years in the Peace Corps, then several more in graduate school.  I had student loans to pay off, bills to pay, children to raise. My life had gone off in another direction.

For a long time after 1983, I thought that my dream of becoming of writer was just that– a dream.  A writer’s road not taken. I remembered the contract, the joy, and the disappointment that swiftly followed.   I could have been a writer…but I chose another path.

But dreams are not so easily abandoned.  It was twenty-six years from that unsigned contract to achieving my dream of being a New York Times Bestseller.

I found a story that spoke directly to my innermost desires. A story that whispered in my ears that if was possible even for the most earthbound and ordinary to know what it feels like to soar.

A story not about fear, but about courage, hope, and determination.

Horses teach us two very important things about life. The first is that sometimes, it is right to be terrified.  Life can be scary and unpredictable, tragic and hard.

But the second truth we learn from horses is even more powerful.  They teach us that it’s right to keep dreaming, to imagine yourself floating over obstacles. to believe you can soar.

“post and rail, splash, coffin, log rails.  I envisioned each jump, felt my stride, imagined seeing the fence rush toward me as I crouched forward on Fleet’s neck and felt his powerful hindquarters gather up, ready to spring.”  Rider or non-rider, aren’t we all like that?  Crouched forward, wind at our faces, as the future rushes toward us at a sometimes terrifying speed.  We take on life at a gallop, and some of our dreams fall off, abandoned, and yet never quite forgotten?

So don’t give up! Don’t be afraid to open the box where you’ve stashed your abandoned dreams. The course may be long, but steer true, and eventually, you may reach your destination.

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I was a sophomore at Yale when I wrote a story called Keeping House. It was about a woman who refused to get out of bed, and so her house was slowly overtaken by dust, until she was eventually suffocated, The slowest of all slow deaths. I submitted it to the college literary magazines where it was roundly rejected. That year, one college undergraduate published a story in The New Yorker, and we ran into Jodie Foster, a classmate, at every turn. We knew how to recognize talent– and the lack of it, of course.

At that time, I was taking a class called “The James Family Project” and we were going to learn the art of television screenwriting by learning to write about the famous 19th century writer Henry James and his family.

I chose the class because it involved creative writing, and because it looked easy.

There were six students in the class, five boys, and me. The professor was an out-of-shape guy in a tweed jacket with wild hair threaded with gray and a souped up vocabulary– to my youthful eyes he was the essence of a failure posing as a know-it-all.

He said that he was working on a show for PBS, and he hinted around that he had all kinds of connections and that if we were “good enough” we might be able to get a foot in the door. I suspected that he was frankly hoping that our work would be good enough to steal.

The boys in the class were all trying to impress the guy– hoping to get a big break. I was terribly shy and sat silent most of the time but there was something about this man that seemed painfully familiar to me– even then, I had an awareness that the writer’s road was not an easy one, and that he must have once had more glorious dreams than to be pacing that basement classroom trapped with the six of us.

Still and all, I found myself becoming obsessed with the sister of William and Henry James–Alice. A brilliant woman in her own right, she had spent most of her adulthood as a neurasthenic, confined to her bed bitterly complaining of her ills, while her two brothers, the psychologist and the novelist, went on to become some of the most illustrious men of the nineteenth century. She reminded me of the woman in my story who took to her bed and refused to get up.

The secret truth of my life was that I was having a terrible time. One of my two roommates was falling apart, and I myself was barely holding my head above water, but in a quiet way that no one seemed to notice. I was not doing much of my work. I was too shy to participate in class. My grades were a train wreck. I thought at any moment I might take to my bed and refuse to get up, and worse yet, I feared that no one would notice.

Then, partway through the semester, John Hinckley shot Ronald Reagan, and gave as the motive his love for Jodie Foster. There were news reporters everywhere, and people trying to interview us–do you know her? How does she dress? Who are her friends? Jodie Foster went into hiding and was about to give her first press conference in the same building where my class was going to meet.

There were armed guards at the entrance to the building, and when I tried to pass, they demanded my teacher’s name. John Hinckley, Jodie Foster, Ronald Reagan. These were names on the nightly news. Not my bag-of-hot-air, middle-aged, slightly overweight professor. What was his name? If I had known it at some point, by then it had slipped away.

“I…uh…I….I..don’t know…” I said.

I felt the security officers’ arms encircle mine, and my feet were just lifting up off the ground.

Another student bailed me out just in time.

David Milch, you idiot.

Oh yeah.

David Milch, David Milch. I repeated it to myself so I wouldn’t forget it.

At the end of the semester, I had to hand in the one assignment, a television screenplay about Alice James and then meet with the professor in his office.

“So,” he said, leaning forward from behind the big desk and looking at me. “You never say a word, sometimes you don’t come to class…”

He had my twenty-page screenplay sitting on the desk between us, my heart was pounding and my mouth was dry.

I nodded.

“Why didn’t you come to class?”

How does one answer a question like that? How did I explain about the fact that I liked to go up to the seventh floor library stacks and write poetry on the carrells and stare out the windows? That I read lots of novels, but never the ones that were assigned in class? That I felt like the lady in my story, the one who never wanted to get out of bed?

“Are you passing your other classes?”

“Oh sure,” I said. “Everything is perfectly fine.”

He picked up my papers from his desk and looked at me. “There is no doubt that you have talent. But, what I want to know if you are okay. I want to know if you are doing okay in your other classes?”

I did a quick run through in my mind… at the end of that disastrous semester I would be on academic probation.

“Fine,” I said. “Everything is fine.”

I didn’t tell him then, but it made no small impression on me that he had cared enough to ask, and that he had noticed me, Alice James, silent, small and tamped down, among the boisterous others.

I don’t think it was more than two or three years later that I saw his face on the cover of Newsweek Magazine.

David Milch had gotten famous as a TV writer and director of some of the hottest shows on TV, and in the article, it mentioned that there had been a time when he had been so down on his luck that he had been living in his office at Yale, right around that time that he was my teacher. He loved racehorses, but racehorses, like the writing profession, were a risky gamble.

I’ll always be one of his biggest fans– for introducing me to Alice James, and for asking me how I was doing when no one else did.

So, I was excited when I learned that David Milch was producing an HBO series called Luck, about horseracing, and disheartened and disappointed when I learned it was cancelled due to horses deaths on the set, then again happy when I received a joyous letter from someone who had adopted one of the “luck” horses and given him a wonderful new home.

Success is impossible to predict– the worst failure sleeping in an office may quickly morph into next month’s sensation. In the youthful arrogance of twenty, I had mistaken David Milch for washed-up when he had not even gotten started.

But, kindness is impossible to mistake, and not soon forgotten.

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My trainer went to check out some of the “Luck” horses at the Thoroughbred Rehab Center , and came home declaring “Sarah – you must adopt one of these horses.” She and the rehab director even had one picked out for me. I adopted Bohemian without spending even one minute “shopping” for a horse. In fact, I signed my name on the dotted line only 10 minutes after meeting him (in a box stall), and the first time I saw him out of a stall was as he was walking towards the trailer. Was I crazy?! Who gets a horse without test riding or at least trotting out first?

But somehow it was meant to be. Bohemian is now learning his third job: 3-day eventing. And so far, it is going great! He loves to jump and is the fastest learning horse I’ve ever met. But meanwhile, he has indicated that his true calling is that of cuddlebug extraordinaire! He whinnies hello, loves to hug, and put out his nose for kisses. He’s now a member of my family, and I’m very blessed to have such a fun and handsome horse. And no matter how far we get doing eventing together, he is my snuggly champion.

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Since Craig was serving as the US Equestrian Team physician, we arrived a day before the Games began and that afternoon we had a chance to walk across the grounds watching the vendors and exhibitors set up their booths. One of them was the Maker’s Mark Secretariat Center, an ex-racehorse adoption facility we discovered was tucked away in a far corner of the Horse Park. When I picked up their brochure, I saw one of the horses featured on the cover was a big rose gray. My first thought was “oh, I like him.”

At the end of the day, all the officials and team members were instructed to leave through a gate at the back of the Park. As it turned out, the road leading to that back gate took us right by ….. the Maker’s Mark Secretariat Center. Of course, we stopped and asked to be introduced to Petromom (aka “Monty”). We were told he’d raced three times as a three year-old (earning a win, a place and a show), but when he’d returned to training the next year, his leg had blown up and his 90 year-old breeder had decided to give him to the Center in the hopes that he could find a new career.

I visited Monty any chance I had during WEG and just before the Games ended, I was finally able to get on for a short ride. His butt was too high and I knew he didn’t have a clue how to jump, but he had the softest mouth and was so balanced and quiet. I fell in love despite his gangliness. Several other people were interested in adopting Monty, but Craig was absolutely determined that this was the horse for me and successfully championed our case to the Center manager. Two weeks later, Monty arrived at our farm outside Nashville.

I’ve competed in Amateur Owner and Adult Amateur Hunters for more than 25 years and Monty is the best horse I’ve ever had or will have. Even when he’s bad he’s wonderful. Monty’s just beginning in show in Baby Green — we’re taking it slow because I’m too old and he’s too good to rush and we’re both enjoying the process.

My trainer, Jim Williams, liked Monty from the start. “This is such a special horse,” he told me, “and I’m certain Monty was given to you for a reason. We don’t know what that reason is but I’m sure we’ll find out someday.”

This May, Craig unexpectedly passed away. The next morning, I went down to the barn and saw Monty stretching his big gray head out of the stall to greet me. And I knew what his purpose was — it was to give me a reason to get out of bed in the morning and go on doing what I love and what Craig loved to do.

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She was not very successful at the races, running mostly in allowance and claiming races, however she proved how big her heart is and how strong her will to survive is, in many other ways.

Tory came into my life in the Fall of 2008 when a picture of a bay horse and her rider, swimming in a lake, caught my eye. Her owner, a young college student, did not have the time that she felt her she deserved and needed. We chatted for a while exchanging stories about our horses but the girl wanted more money for her mare than I was able to spend.

About a month later, the girl called back. Her situation had changed. She needed to sell her mare because. The owner of her boarding facility wanted the horse gone and even had offered to take the horse to a sale, saying that she was only good for the meat market anyway. Desperate, the girl said she’d take whatever I could give, and I agreed to come and take a look.

The day after Christmas of 2008 we finally met. When we first arrived, Tory was standing in the barn aisle covered by a thick horse blanket. She was a bay with a pretty head and a kind eye, standing about 17 hands high. She was a little on the thin side, but I felt this was nothing that could not be fixed. Her owner rode her first and then it was my turn: I could hardly believe how sweet and quiet she was. I had pretty much already decided that this was the horse I was looking for.

By now it was January, and we were getting a place ready for Tory to come home to. But, the evening before we were to go pick her up, I received a phone call that Tory was sick. She had contracted a severe case of “bastard strangles” and had a basketball size abscess between her front legs that had erupted, bastard strangles. The girl and her parents did not know what to do and I recommended that they contact a vet immediately. I felt horrible, but given the situation, I told them that until the horse is completely recovered, I could not bring her home.

We sort of lost touch in the time that followed until March 2009, when the girl called me in tears. Tory needed to be moved that day. The stable owner had threatened to get rid of the horse, and even worse, there was also a huge bump on her head now. She said someone at the barn had observed the horse being hit over the head with a shovel. She did not know who to turn to. I relayed the message to my husband who was working outside and he only said: “well, see if you can get someone with a trailer to go get her”. I phoned a friend and within 1-1/2 hours we were on the road.

I will never forget what I saw when I walked into the barn. Tory stood in the barn aisle and looked like a mere shadow of the horse that I had seen just three months before. Her neck was sunken in and there was no spark of life in her once so beautiful eyes. She had a huge lump under her eyes stretching from the right side of her face to the left. Her legs were covered in filth. Her back and hip bones were protruding and you could count every rib. I took Tory by the halter and lead and walked her towards the trailer. Tory stepped into the trailer without hesitation and stood quietly for the trip home. Later on her owner told me that she had never done this before. Tory hates trailers and does not load easily. Well, she did that day.

We brought Tory home and bedded her down for the night. TThe next morning we he next morning we took pictures of her to have a record of her conditio then took her to the vet for a check up. The vet confirmed a skull fracture that was recent and had not yet healed. We were lucky that it did not seem to affect her breathing, but the swelling under her eyes and the tearing were a result of the skull fracture. She was at least 200 lbs under weight. The other concern was the Strangles that she had battled. He saw a large zigzag shaped wound between her front legs still in the process of closing and healing, but felt positive that it was no longer contagious. He felt that with love and care, she’d recover. He also thought that the tearing would most likely persist and that the bump on her head would likely stay or perhaps even get bigger from calcification as it heals.

The weight went back on much quicker than I had expected and within 3 months she started to look much better. She shed out her dull hair coat and turned a nice shiny copper color. Over time even the bump on her head started to get smaller and the tearing stopped. Her emotional scars stayed with her though for some time to come. Whenever I entered her stall while she was in it, she would back into a far corner and watch. To this day she at times shies away from people entering her stall. You can do just about anything with her out of her stall, but there is always a sort of caution and reserve when in the stall.

I did not get to ride much that first year, but I took her out for time spent grazing and we worked on just getting to know each other. We did go on a Poker Ride together and she was the perfect trail horse. Quiet and easy going, she was a pleasure to have around.

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I believe we bonded over these months in a way that would not have been possible in any other way. She learned to trust me. When I came into the barn she would softly whinny and stick her head over the side of her stall wall to look for me. While cleaning her stall, she’d walk up to my back and press her head against my back or lean her head against my chest looking for some attention. She loved getting her forehead brushed, closing her eyes in enjoyment. Recently I turned the horses out and all three trotted out looking forward to a day of grazing in the sun. Just as I was ready to leave, Tory turned around and came back up towards me. She stopped right in front of me and nudged my shoulder, turned around and trotted back out. Was that her way of saying “thanks and I love you”?

She may not be a show jumper, eventer, dressage mount or other kind of show horse earning ribbons and trophies, but she won my heart and even though she had been beaten, starved and abused, she never turned on her handlers. She is a champion in every sense of the way to me.

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The next weekend we had the float hooked up real early and took the 5 hour drive from Brisbane up the highway to the back of a small Australian coastal town. We were expecting to see Leo in paddock condition, maybe with feet slightly overgrown, and a bit on the shaggy side – we had been assured that the mate was looking after our friend’s horses. What we hadn’t prepared ourselves for was what happens to a 2.5 year old clydie gelding in an Australian drought living hidden out the back of someone’s large property on coastal sand for a couple of years. What greeted us, once we could finally get close enough, was a dull eyed, scared, undernourished (he weighed just on 450kg), wormy boy, with horribly overgrown split hooves with permanent damage right up to the coronet band, and a fairly significant doze of Qld Itch. What had I gotten myself in to?

5 hours later the four of us had finally loaded Leo into the float after he was exhausted and we literary lifted him in, to just travel one hour south to spend the night with family. What a horrid night; Leo hadn’t seen real grass in years and we were so worried that he would colic from either the little bit of grass he had access to, or just from the stress of the day. The next day we had to face a possible 5 hour replay of the previous day’s loading experience. Horse hubbie to the rescue. He very calmly told everyone to disappear, backed the float up to a slope and after 2 ½ hours of quiet coaxing, Leo was back on the float. 50% improvement in 24 hours, we were on a roll here!

At home Leo was wormed, watched, wormed again and then the slow rehabilitation feeding regime started. We were also in terrible drought conditions, but we luckily had access to plentiful supplies of good grassy hay. Australian’s love lucerne, but Clydesdales don’t. Once I was happy that he was settled, his teeth were done, the vet visited for a check up, and the first farrier visit happened. To cut a long story short, 2 years later we had a glossy healthy 800kg Clydesdale, but one that was still battling chronic thrush. What a learning curve. I must have read every article I could find, been told how to fix it ranging from “just leave it alone” to “use iodine every day”. After 2 years we had an otherwise healthy horse with thrush so bad farrier number 5 could put his finger right in the stinking holes and they were bleeding slightly. But farrier number 5 has become a great friend and he saved Leo’s life. That first visit he didn’t beat around the bush, in fact he was quite blunt; he would do what he could but it may be too late.

Leo comes from an amazing line of working Clydesdales, his sire and brother were both champions in the show ring, and certainly in the competition ring. We were novices and he was nervous of other horses in harness around him. So here we go again – slow hours of patiently driving him with the slide on all kinds of ground and all kinds of noise, and with other horses all around him. He did end his “cart horse” career on a high; in harness with his brother being centre stage at a friend’s wedding. Looking stunning and so well behaved, but he never settled at shows with a whole lot of stuff going on around him.

By this time our 16 year old daughter was eventing at pony club, and I was instructing. I was finding more and more that I would spend my weekends out on the cross country course with other people’s children, too tired when I got home to harness Leo up and exercise him. This is also where the snakes come in! The cross country course at pony club was on flood plain right on the bank of a river. Being maintained by volunteer parents at the club meant it was regularly overgrown, and was in an area known for deadly King Brown snakes. It was crunch time; I had to get myself on horseback to instruct to get me up out of the grass as everything that moved was a snake (my phobia), and my only horse was my cart horse Leo. Home we went, threw a saddle on one day, did the girth up the next; and the fearless child climbed on the next. Not an ear twitched, and off Leo walked as if he had been in saddle all his life, as long as we only walked in straight lines and let him make the rules everything was sweet.

That was five years ago. Leo has reignited my love of riding, and with the help of the most amazing dressage instructor he has now become a “dressage Clydesdale”. Circles, straightness, cantering, just staying in the arena – all major challenges to overcome one at a time! He will never get to the Olympics, nor is he likely to ever do those fantastic high school movements, but he is honest, hard working and just so popular with all the horsey people around our part of the world. As I drive into showgrounds for competitions I always hear “hey Mum, Leo’s here”. We regularly place in our tests, and he is just getting better and better all the time.

He is a real champion, not only because of what he has come through, but where he is taking us!

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