“…I learned that we don’t always get to decide who our horses will become. This is a hard lesson for those of us who want to have control.”
new skills on Atticus. The guy at the feed store said, “Dig a big hole. Horses are livestock.” In other words, horses are too expensive to keep, feed, maintain, and house if they don’t have a specific agricultural purpose. I began wondering if the feed store guy was right,
and I felt guilty about even considering it, so I called my vet knowing she’d set me straight. “I’m told I should put this horse down,” I said. She replied, “You’ll have to find someone else to do that.” It was the horse-whisperer in Georgia, the one who
sure. But that was before he bolted like his great-grandsire Secretariat would do out of a starting gate … while being led with my husband on his back. And that was before he was expelled from “boarding school” after bolting with a dressage trainer on his back and pitching her into an arena wall. And that was before a “horse-whisperer” from Georgia told me to think long and hard because somebody was going to get hurt or even killed by this horse. “And you can’t sell him,” he said. “That would be unethical.” So… what to do about Atticus? At first I believed that
I had to cure Atticus. He needed a job, and I needed to figure out how to make that happen. I spoke about it with everyone I knew. My husband said, “I’m not getting on him again, and neither are you.” A friend said, “Send him to the hunter-jumper people down the road. They’re crazy. They’ll get on anything, and they’re used to falling off. If he has talent they’ll keep him.” Somehow putting someone crazier than Atticus on his back and pointing him toward jumps didn’t seem like the answer. Besides, hadn’t I already rescued this horse? Another friend suggested that I send him to the local Parelli guy who, as it turned out, seemed a little too excited about trying his
38 September/October 2010
told me that it was unethical for me to sell Atticus, who convinced me that it was okay to give up on him. I didn’t have to ride him. I didn’t have to event him. I didn’t have to do anything with him. And I’d be all the safer and saner for that. But still, what to do about Atticus? Atticus wasn’t “supposed to” turn out this way, and
that he was different was clear from the start when as a weanling his disappointed breeder decided to put him on an adoption site. That breeder learned that we can’t control how the genetic dice are going to roll. And I learned that we don’t always get to decide who our horses will become. This is a hard lesson for those of us who want to have control. These days when I
walk out to the barn and see him in his stall, or when I see him being anti-social in the pasture, I am reminded that Atticus has
brought me a lesson in speculation. A lesson in product development. A lesson in acceptance. And a lesson in humility. And for all of these lessons given, Atticus has earned a home for life.
WT
Top: Atticus—a lesson in acceptance. Bottom: Milo greets Atticus after a short separation. They are four-year-olds. Photos courtesy of Nancy Parshall
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