THE RIDER SEPTEMBER 2010 HILLS OF HEADWATERS SPOTLIGHT /7 Horse Crazy by Kathleen Kennedy


Horses had always played a big part in our lives when we were kids so when my cousin, Liz, sug- gested that we start riding again my sister and I were enthusiastic, but wary. We were back on the family farm, but we were now nearing our fifties and it had been probably thirty years since we had ridden. So when the next call from Liz was to tell us about some rescue horses she had


to the slaughterhouse. They were quiet due to ill health and mal-nourish- ment, but they were not approachable as their instinct for self-preserva- tion had been cranked to High and obviously stuck. We knew we had our hands full, we just weren’t sure what to do about it.


That was when Anna Wieland from Shelburne stepped in. Anna had been our farrier for several years for my daughter’s pony and when she heard about


began to focus on their indi- vidual needs. By the third week she had trimmed all their feet and I had stopped dreaming about wild mus- tangs stampeding off the property and into the Mulmur hills beyond.


We continued working with them through the winter (and we spoiled them a bit too), and when spring came and they shed their winter coats we were rewarded by the sight of glossy, unblem- ished, well-fed two year olds. Now it is August and Biscuit has been under saddle for three months and we have


just this week started Sassy. Rosie (a strawberry roan) and Firefly (a pretty Arabian) we are hoping to place in new homes now that they are happy and healthy. This morning they watched at the corral fence as Sassy accept- ed her first rider up (Anna). It reminded me of those early Sunday mornings last fall when we all gathered at that same fence to watch those scared and sickly beasts. What a long way they have come.


Teabiscuit (QH) with Anna Wieland after 3 months, Aug 2010


Firefly (Arabian) a few days after arriving, Sept ‘09


heard of (yearlings, not halter-broken) we just laughed. We had been thinking more along the lines of a nice quiet twelve- year old; a been-there, done-that kind of horse. Liz said she would go to see them anyway having already set up an appoint- ment and wanted to know if we wanted to tag along. We declined, telling her we didn’t really want to see horses that were in desper- ate need of homes when we were in no position to help. It turned out our posi- tion was more tenuous than we thought, as we discov- ered when I talked to Liz the next day.


“Did you fall in love with one?” I asked her. “It’s worse than that,”


she replied. “I bought four.”


our acquisitions she was incredulous, but intrigued. She never actually said you’re crazy but she must have had a pretty sore tongue from biting the words back.


Anna, we discovered, had worked with many problem horses before and was not the sort to turn from a challenge. These horses were no exception. She embraced the project as her own and immediate- ly began working with us to gentle these despondent and scared horses.


I should mention that Liz lives in a Brampton subdivision with a yard barely large enough to accommodate the family rabbit, so a week later a trailer was pulling into my Mulmur barnyard. The horses were four of the hundred or so rescued Quarter horses that turned up in Georgetown in September 2009. They were thin, covered in warts and rain-rot and ring- worm; a couple of them had nasty scars running down their legs like their previous pasture had maybe been a metal scrap yard. They stepped off the trailer more like retired thirty year olds than year- lings. They looked utterly defeated as if they fully expected this final stop to have brought them at last


The changes over the next few weeks were astonishing as the horses skin problems slowly began to clear and their muscles bulked up. Anna was working wonders with them and we knew that although we may have res- cued the horses, she had definitely rescued us. Soon, every Sunday morn- ing we had friends drop- ping in and neighbours walking over with coffee and muffins to watch Anna’s 8:00 a.m. training sessions.


learned from these sessions and I saw more than one open-mouthed expression of amazement when Anna explained what she was going to do and then pre- dict accurately how the horse was going to respond.


Everybody


Within a couple of weeks all four horses were leading well and had stopped flinching at every approaching hand. We were beginning to move around them at speeds somewhat quicker than molasses now, and Anna


Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20