For those who have been around a long time, you know that my youngest has gone through a lot of heartbreak when it came to finding her a heart horse. Her first heart horse, Sunny, died only nine months after arriving in Oklahoma of EPM—a disease transmitted by opossums to horses. It’s a terrible disease that robs them of the ability to control their body while their mind is fully aware of what they are trying to do.
A few months after we lost Sunny, I found Sunburst at a kill pen lot. He was a great second horse for her, but he wasn’t “the one”. Sunburst was older, and within a few years of bringing him home, we had to put him down. He had no teeth from years of neglect (before he came to us), and I couldn’t keep weight on him.
After we lost Sunburst, I rescued another horse, Jack, from another kill pen. He was a big beautiful paint, and I thought we would have lots of years together since he was only 19. Those years turned into just three weeks. After he had settled in, I got this odd feeling that something was just off with him. Following my gut, I had the vet out and learned that not only did he have a brain tumor, but he had a broken pelvis. The kill pen drugged him for the videos so he would look ridable. I had to put him down that day. Watching my daughter lose another horse (three in three years, two of which were within three weeks of each other), I was angry, and I took to the social media board for the kill pen, venting about how they drugged the animal and forced it to live in pain just to make a buck.
It was in that group and from that post that our lives changed.
A woman messaged me about a friend of hers who had a rescue (not a kill pen) in Kansas and she had a cute little horse who needed a home.
His name was Chubs.
I messaged the rescue about Chubs on Thanksgiving day (I remember making pie crust while I was getting all the details about him), and on January 3rd, after a whole mess of snow and cold weather, we brought Chubs home. He was about 200lbs underweight when we went to look at him. He had rain rot from not getting the nutrients he needed and was about the ugliest horse I’d ever seen. I honestly told myself we’d made a huge mistake the whole drive home with him.
Boy, was I wrong.
I can’t even begin to tell you how much of a blessing this little horse has been. He’s also now fat, healthy, and STUNNING. We know that he’s fifteen years old, but we don’t know his exact birthday because the owner who used the rescue to sell him refuses to give me his papers. He paid a lot of money for Chubs (apparently, he has amazing bloodlines), but after neglecting the horse for so long, his condition was horrible, and the man couldn’t sell Chubs for what he paid for him. He doesn’t want me selling him for more than I paid, and if I had his papers, I could. He doesn’t believe me when I tell him Chubs isn’t going to be for sale, ever.
In the end, it doesn’t matter. We consider his “gotcha date” as his birthday, which was 3 years ago, January 3rd. It took my daughter and him a while to be ready for one another, but now that they are finally in their groove, they are the perfect pair. We had an amazing summer full of trailing riding and swimming in 2023, and I can’t wait to have more in 2024 and beyond.
P. S. I post a lot about our riding adventures with Chubs and my horse Finnick in the LVP Reader group on Facebook. JOIN US today if you want to see all the fun!
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