Not Every Story Has a Happy Ending

It's important that we encourage each other, of course it is. Well, this message is maybe not going to be encouraging, it's going to be gritty and real. It's going to be about dashed dreams, ethical decisions and hard times.

The first photo here came up in my memories from 2013 today, so I thought I'd tell Memphis' story. His story has become a big part of who I am as a horseman and as a human being.

When I moved to the farm and married my husband Glenn in 2013, he said to me that I should do something with horses that I'd always wanted to do, now that we had our own place. I took that to heart, and decided that the thing I'd always wanted to do was rehab and recycle off-the-track-Thoroughbreds. I'd grown up riding TBs in the hunter/jumper business, and I loved the breed and had always wanted to help them out post-track life.

So I bought(or went and picked up for free) a bunch of them. Memphis came to us in the late spring of 2013. I'd found him through Facebook, and he cost $2500. He was a five-year-old stallion who had raced 12 times over the past year or so, so according to his records, he hadn't raced until he was four. He was a gorgeous horse, 16 hands and dapple grey. We had him shipped in from West Virginia and went to work.

Glenn pulled his shoes (racing plates) and I booked a castration for him. He was a gentleman. He was lovely to handle on the ground, and though he had a scar on a hind leg, he appeared sound. He didn't have the body soreness or obvious limb lamenesses we'd seen in a bunch of the others off the track, so we were thrilled with him.

We had him gelded, and basically the same day, turned him out with our gelding herd, where he was instantly accepted. We gave him almost six months off, with lots of freedom, forage and friends and he thrived. He looked great, he was easy to handle, and he was just gorgeous, inside and out. "This is THE ONE," I started to think. THE ONE.

Come fall of 2013, I began to bring Memphis in to start ground work. He was just so thoughtful and had so much try. Though what I was asking of him was different from what he knew, he went with me. He said, "yes" a lot. He adapted to the western saddle well and I put some rides on him in the round pen.

Just everything about him was perfect, in my mind. Not too big, not too small, enough body to take up my leg, no baggage, an amazing mind, a willingness to try anything. Before long, I was throwing a rope off him and helping him find his right lead and riding him out in the fields by himself.

Then one day, he didn't come in for dinner. That's never good, as horse people know. I grabbed a halter and went to find him out in the pasture. There he was, standing in a corner of the field, non-weight-bearing on his right front, his fetlock as big as a cantaloupe.

He hobbled and hopped to the barn, ever kind and accommodating. I put in a frantic call to the vet. He said to cold hose it and wrap it and he'd be out first thing in the morning. So we did. Memphis continued to not bear any weight on the leg.

We did x-rays the next day, and though the images were slightly "inconclusive", our vet was concerned about a possible fracture and recommended a trip to the university hospital, where they had better diagnostic tools.

So we made an appointment for him, and in the meantime, treated him like a precious egg, with deep shavings, lots of hay nets and friends outside his stall door. We filled the trailer with shavings and carefully drove him the two hours to Auburn for diagnostics.

The vets at Auburn were able to rule out a fracture, but then we had a different problem: if it's not a fracture, what IS it? Why is he so lame, and why is there so much swelling?

Auburn sent him home with anti-inflammatories, and we planned to take him back for more diagnostics after the swelling had come down some more, so that they could get better images.

Back to Auburn again, and ultrasound imaging showed some "dirty" joint spaces in his front fetlocks. In other words, it looked like there might be some stuff in there that didn't belong there. The vet recommended exploratory arthroscopic surgery to insert a camera into his joint spaces in his front fetlocks to get a clearer picture of what was going on in there. Depending on what they found, at that time, they could also clean the joints up arthroscopically as well.

My vet bills on Memphis, when we added this procedure, were nearing $5000. I didn't know where the money was going to come from, but I consented to the surgery. I just wanted Memphis to be well again.

It was a couple of days between when we dropped Memphis off and when they did the surgery. Glenn was out of town on a business trip the day of the surgery, so I was at the farm alone, working with the other OTTBs we'd picked up and waiting for the phone to ring.

The phone rang, I picked it up, and the vet said that Memphis was out of surgery and recovering well. Whew. Great! Findings? Well, what they'd found was that basically, Memphis didn't have any cartilage left in his fetlock joints. Both fronts. I proceeded to ask the vet about what kind of life Memphis could have, and basically, she said that likely, by the age of 10, he would be unrideable, and that a "very light riding" career might be possible, with medical maintenance.

I remember what I said. "Put him down. Why didn't you call me while he was on the table?"

The vet was shocked, I think. They have a thing that when you want to end a horse's life at the hospital and you're not there, you have to say it on the phone to two vets. I did that. And I hung up the phone. Then I sat in a corner of the tack room and I cried for a very, very long time, until way after dark.

There will people who won't agree with what I did. But it was my decision, and did what I thought was best for him at the time. You know what happens to these horses? They end up in a pasture somewhere, gorgeous and fat, and the story gets lost. Then someone tries to ride them. Or they end up in a pasture somewhere, hobbling around in chronic pain, riddled with ulcers and eventually struggling to lay down and get up until someone finally has the kindness to release them from their pain. I didn't want any of that for him.

I don't know that I've recovered from that. I almost quit horses after that, because it was just all too hard. To have such dreams, to see other people's success stories, and then to have such heartbreak, I was just exhausted, so very tired and worn out.

I did come back, and I changed my horse life to focus on starting some youngsters from the beginning. There will always be heartbreak in horses, this we know for sure. But the babies bring the idea of the possibilities in the future, and their curiosity is infectious. I get to study my own mistakes, instead of other people's mistakes, and each one we do is better than the last.

And if I ever get to feeling smug, or like I am entitled to anything in the horse world, I think of Memphis and how just because we have a dream, it doesn't mean we're entitled for that dream to come to fruition.

People ask me today, "What are you doing with so-and-so? Are you keeping them?" My answer, most often, is "Who knows?" Day by day, we will see, and I'll go with it.

It's been almost 10 years since Memphis left us, and I can feel a change starting in me. For the past 10 years, I haven't "loved" a horse again. I couldn't do it, "just in case." I've kept them at an arm's length, emotionally. I've liked them a lot, my horses, but I have not gone "all in" again like I did with Memphis. I knew I couldn't, not until I knew that I could take that again, if it happened again in some way. It can be anything -- lightening, colic, a broken leg. But I think I'm getting to where I could do it again if I had to, so hopefully sometime soon I'll be telling River that I love him. We'll see.