Theo talked me through each of their stories as if he was a tour guide, which, in a way, he kind of was.
“So what do you do when you deem them rehabilitated enough?” I asked while we walked three horses—two for Theo, one for me—to the pasture for the day.
“Depends. Some we sell to families, others go to be therapy horses. We sold a draft horse a few years back to this family who wanted to live off grid and didn’t want to get a tractor.” Theo chuckled as he closed the gate behind the horses. “He’s still very happily doing the heavy stuff there, or so I hear.”
“That’s nice.”
We walked back to move the next batch and then the next one, until all the horses that stayed inside the stable during the night were out, except for the siblings.
“Do you think they’d like being in the arena? I know wind is a big deal for him, but do the arena walls bang in the wind like some metal buildings?” I asked, frowning in thought.
“No, it doesn’t. Ruth made sure of that when she had it built for that exact reason.” Theo seemed to think about it as well. “Well, if you’re going into town and won’t be here all day, then I’d say we should put them in the arena with plenty of hay instead of the paddock where they’ve been when the weather is nice. Because if the weather takes a turn to the windy, then I’d be stuck without a second set of hands.”
“Sounds good to me,” I glanced around. “Wanna do it now before any volunteers show up?”
Theo thought for a moment. “Let’s take the ones in the corrals their food first, and do the twins last. That way everyone’s nice and calm. We can control people, if someone shows up, much easier than horses.”
“Okay, you lead the way.”
Theo rolled the feed cart out to the corrals. One of them had two horses, the other three.
“Is there a specific reason why these five are in here and not the stable?” I asked.
“Yeah. Both of the bays have issues being indoors. They were rescued from separate situations where they’d been confined to a stall for years. Once we got them used to being outside, they preferred it, so we keep them here.”
I looked at the horses, sighing. I should get used to these stories, but even something like this, which I assumed was on the milder end of things, was upsetting.
“The pinto has some lung issues, so he’s better outside. The chestnut doesn’t like to be handled, he’s one of the new ones, so we just let him be here with the others.”
“And the dun?”
“She’s new, too, and she’s not even three yet, so she’s a kid who needs to be socialized properly. She’d lived with her mom at the old place and when the mom had to be put down, she got too hard to handle for the older couple who owned her.”
Theo, having ducked inside the corrals and poured the food into each of the horses’ feeding buckets, got out of the second one and leaned on the fence, staring at the dun mare. There was something different, a fondness, about him when he looked at her.
“What are you going to do with her?” I asked, hoping to get him to talk more to see if his hunch was right.
“I was thinking she’d make a good riding horse for someone.” He smiled ever so slightly. “She’s pretty big, maybe a bit over sixteen hands, so she’ll do well with many kinds of people.”
Including one surly foreman of the rescue. Not that I told him that. I immediately made a mental note to tell Hudson that this mare was earmarked for Theo.
Hudson had mentioned Theo didn’t have a horse of his own which, to me, was weird. Of course, he had his hands full, but didn’t he deserve a horse that wouldn’t be moving on once the rescue’s job was done?
“Have you worked with her yet?”
“Not much. She’s been with us for a bit over a month and for the first two weeks she was in a bit of a shock and trying to figure things out. She’s gotten much better already and is safe to move around by anyone with any proper horse skills.” Theo smiled as the mare shook her long mane and went back to making sure her bucket was empty.
“How do you start with someone like her?”
“From the ground. I tend to use a lot of time for groundwork with any horse that comes in, even if they’d be good to ride immediately. It makes sense to get that relationship established, forming a foundation to whatever else comes next, you know.” Theo turned his head toward me, then seemed embarrassed and took off his ever-present ball cap, ran his fingers through his hair, and put the cap back on.
“Sounds incredible to me,” I murmured, looking at the horses to give Theo space. “Not everyone would use that approach, even with rescues.”
Theo nodded, his expression changing to something tighter, almost angry. “No, no they wouldn’t.”
Together, we turned to go back into the stable, Theo pushing the food cart and taking it to the feed room.
Once that was done, we got to the twins. They really were big horses, and if I didn’t know anything about drafts in general, if I hadn’t had the horse phase as a kid, I would’ve probably been afraid of them based on size alone. Luckily I knew better. Nobody in their right mind would ever breed a nervous draft horse. They needed to be solid in both build and character, which these two clearly were, they just hadn’t been treated in a way that allowed them to flourish.
