DreamHorse.com was a wonderful place to look at and dream about owing a special equine. One day I was perusing the site and there was Buckeye WCF I’m All Gold. He was a pretty buckskin, pinto, miniature horse, weanling, gelding. Gold was offered by one of the most prestigious miniature horse farms in the country. And he was offered at an extremely low price for a miniature coming from that farm. There was a reason for the price. They didn’t know who is daddy was! His mamma was purchased as a quality open broodmare but she blessed them with Gold a few months later. Being ethical, they did not get registration papers for him because they didn’t t know who daddy was. Thus, the low price.
We brought precious little Gold home in the fall. We had only had him for a week or two when I came home from work to a horrendous sight. Gold’s upper jaw was broken and twisted grotesquely to the right. I was certain that he had reached his head through to fence and was kicked by another horse. We loaded him in the trailer for a long worrisome trip to our university equine hospital. It was a difficult drive as we believed that his survival was precarious. The veterinarians said that he was not kicked but that he had bit the bar of a metal gate, panicked and leveraged his head up in a way that snapped his jaw. They had seen it before. The good news was with a lot of care he would survive. Well, you can imagine the bad news, a stay at the hospital, weeks of care, and now he was a very expensive horse. He came home with what looked like a mouthful of a teenager’s braces. He needed a liquid diet and his teeth cleaned and brushed after every meal. Gold embraced the special care and attention. We were grateful that he had, what looked like a full recovery.
Gold’s next adventure was being sent to the trainer to become a driving horse. Gold deserved nothing but the best and he was sent to the best. After weeks of the anticipation of picking up our next driving horse we drove the hours to bring Gold home. Got to the farm and with excited anticipation we watched as our talented trainer harnessed Gold, hitched Gold, and got into the cart and moved out. After a minute or two of an impressive drive gold decided that he would take matters into his own hands and off he went. He took our wonderful trainer to the nearest evergreen tree parked there and knocked off the trainer’s hat. The trainer was humbled, embarrassed, and not particularly pleased with Gold. This was defiantly not the norm for our trainer’s presentation. The trainer won but it was an indication as how Gold would cooperate in the future.
Gold is 15 now and a happy little guy. He lives with his best friend Buckeye WCF Classical Grace Kelly. He has a shed under a big tree. Gold talks to us with the cutest little nicker. He enjoys pets and grooming and attention. He won ribbons and awards at the county fair. Driving him was always a bit uncertain. He was capable of doing his own thing if it suited him. It wouldn’t surprise us if just ignored the bit and took off in a run. Thank goodness he chose to behave in the show pen, most of the time. Through the years we have determined that his broken jaw probably deadened nerves in his mouth thus the bit didn’t faze him. Our wonderful trainer would support that!
Lesson here is that a bargain horse is never a bargain. Yet, we would not trade our journey with Gold.