When It’s Time to Move On

I fell in love with Pulsar the day I met him, which happens to be the day he was born.  He was large and gangly and quite skeptical which is ironic since he turned out to be one of the boldest and bravest horses I’ve ever known.  But as a baby, he would hide behind his mother and hardly let me near him.  I loved antagonizing him to play with me which his mother didn’t appreciate much.  I knew this because I came close enough to her mouth to count her teeth a few times when I wasn’t paying attention.  He was curious, but he was a mama’s boy, so he took advantage of her protection.

I wasn’t worried.  I knew he would come around.  And he did.  When he got weaned and he no longer had a mommy, someone had to fill her shoes.

Pulsar was one of the first horses I started, so I didn’t know a lot about bringing up babies and what to look for in a prospect.  I just knew I was going to make him mine.  He was going to be my jumper and we were going to Grand Prix.

He grew very fast but his hind end and his front end had different timelines, so when he was a yearling, he looked like an oversized donkey.  He was probably 16.1, YUGE head, large, floppy ears; his hind end was probably an entire hand taller than his wither and NO neck.  At this time, I wasn’t telling anyone my big plans for my superstar, because honestly, I didn’t know anything about competing a donkey.

By the time he was two, he had grown to 17.2 hands and his body was starting to catch up with itself so I no longer felt the need to inquire if Select Breeders had been carrying any donkey sperm that may have been mixed with my stallions semen.

The funny thing about Pulsar was that other horses HATED him.  When he was young and he went out with a herd, he would stay on the other side of the paddock and if he attempted to come near them – which he always persisted – at least one of the herd would launch and bite at him.  Although he would be covered in bite and kick marks, he never gave up.  Maybe, on some subconscious level, this is why we bonded.   We were both ugly ducklings who never seemed to understand or care why the rest of the world couldn’t see how cool we were.

Maybe they were just intimidated because they knew he would grow into a cover model.

 

It didn’t matter that he didn’t get along with the other horses because people loved him and he loved those silly little two legged things that always came around and fed him and told him how great he was.  We were gods gift to him and I’m certain that the relationship that I developed with him during his early years is the reason he turned out to be such an amazing partner under saddle.  Most of the scores I received on him at Training Level – my first year showing dressage – were in the 70s.  Pulsar was consistent in the bridle, his 20 meter circles must have had an imaginary line for him to follow, his transitions were always balanced and on the aids and to top it off his oversized ears would just flop around throughout the ENTIRE test. But he was not a dressage horse.  He was too heavy and too slow and he liked it that way.

Besides, his passion was jumping anyway.  

Although I already had my professional status and rode about 6 other horses a day, I always treated Pulsar like my amateur horse.  I treated him like a pet and I did everything with him.  I never confined him to the arena to do the same thing everyday.  It drove my trainer at the time nuts because I would take him for hard gallops and let him run as fast as he wanted.  She was sure I would break him but I never wanted him to become sour.  We spent a lot of the time in the summer in the field or on trail.  If I wasn’t jumping, I didn’t want to be in the arena, unless it was winter and I had no other choice.  (I’m allergic to snow.)  I always wanted to go hunting with him, but never took the chance.  He would have loved it!

As pulsar began to mature and became slower and heavier, I started to come to terms with what everyone had suggested of him since I started him.  Pulsar was a hunter.  I rode him in the jumpers anyway and it was good for me because we never had a rushed round that just seemed hectic and unorganized and he took care of me no matter what. 

I had people mention the idea of selling Pulsar many times to which my response was always “Never! Not even for a million dollars.”  He was my best friend and there is no money that could buy that.  I loved the idea of keeping him forever and him being one of the few show horses in the world who never gets sold.  He would never lose his person.

Unfortunately, I was never the one footing the bill on this horse.  My father was.  Along with 23 other show horses, broodmares and babies.  He was trying to support my dream, but I could see that it was weighing on our relationship.  But I had bigger dreams.  I kept wanting to do more and more and he wanted to pay for less and less.  After Pulsar and I spent a winter in Wellington, Fl, along with my mothers horse Belle and our stallion Patrick it was clear to me I had hit the bottom of the barrel.  It was too much and for a business man, it was not yielding enough return.  I was just starting to salivate on the idea of winters in Florida and the lengths it could take me, and my father was lowering my credit line.

I understood that I couldn’t continue to juice my own father for everything he was worth, but I wasn’t willing to give up on my dreams.  I knew that he would continue to cut off funds and it was time to take matters into my own hands.  It was time to be realistic and understand that my best friend and I had different plans for the future.  No, Pulsar wasn’t making big plans, but he knew who he was.  He was a hunter.  For the past year, I had been trying to make him quicker and lighter to no gain.  As an amateur hunter, he was gold.  It didn’t matter what you did on top of him, he would keep a slow steady pace with every stride.  I knew he was worth a lot.  Enough to support me for plenty of time to plant my own roots and start my own business.  In Florida.

So I sold my best friend.  Wow.  What a terrible sentence.  Some may think “How could you make such a selfish choice?”  I know that my friend wants me to be happy, just like I want the same for him.  I sold him to one of my trainer’s clients because I knew that she recognized what an amazing horse he is and the life he deserves to have.  He’s even continued his modeling career and progressed into television!  http://www.fox2detroit.com/good-day/259460389-story

I think about Pulsar all the time and I check in on him regularly (thank you Facebook!)  just to make sure someone is still loving him as much as I did.  Mostly I think about how grateful I am for the gifts he gave me, especially the opportunity to live in Wellington, Fl and be surrounded by the top riders and trainers in the world.

He was only 7 when I sold him, but we had developed such a tight bond in those 7 years.  The most important thing that he taught me, was how the relationship you have with your horse can drastically improve the results you achieve under saddle.  Almost every horses I work with is a sales horse, or a young horse that I will start and eventually pass on to it’s owner to continue it’s training.  Almost every single one will slip through my hands in the blink of an eye but I still focus my biggest priority on the relationship I have with that horse over any sort of training.  I fall in love with every horse I work with, and I make sure they fall for me.

I made this video for him after I sold him and I still cry the second I hit play.  

 Have you ever had to let a horse you loved dearly go?