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Saturday, Nov. 07, 2009

Carol Reiter: When Willy met Lucy ...

She was standing in a pen at a horse sale, passed through when she didn't bring an opening bid.

We had gone to the sale just to watch, and to see what type of horse tack was for sale. We went out back to look at the horses, and there were a bunch of weanlings in a pen, nice looking colts that had come from Canada. They had just been weaned, they were fat and cute and when they went through the sale pen, they brought good prices.

There were also three mares that had come with those colts. Three older, range mares that had passed their prime, three mares that were basically being dumped.

One of them had feet that obviously hadn't been trimmed in years. Her feet turned up like elves' shoes, and it was painful just to look at her.

We watched all three mares go through the sale, and not bring the opening bid that the owner wanted. They all passed out of the pen, back to the dirty pens behind the sale yard, without a buyer.

We walked back to the pens, and saw the man who had brought the three mares and all those shiny, pretty weanlings. He said he just wanted $500 apiece for the mares.

The mare with the bad feet was short, fat and built like a brick house. We looked at her registration papers, and she was well bred. We discussed it, we looked at her feet, and we thought it over. Those feet worried us, we didn't know why they looked like that. Was she hard to handle? Had she had a foot disease in the past? We didn't know, and we thought it over.

And we bought her.

For $500, we bought a 15-year-old mare who was too old to make it through the harsh Canadian winters. She had had a bunch of babies, and we saw her weanling that came with her to the sale.

It made me ache to watch that poor mare walk. The first thing we did when we got her home was to get our horseshoer out to see what was wrong with her feet.

He said she had hard feet, and just hadn't been taken care of. There really wasn't anything wrong with her feet, just neglect.

So we looked at her papers, gave her the name Lucy, and made plans to breed her to Willy.

Lucy isn't like our other mares. She's short and stout, and she's built like the old-fashioned cow horse that her breeding says she should look like. We weren't sure about her, but she had a hind end like a linebacker, and a pretty head, and, well, we just liked her.

Her first Willy baby was born with a big white head and a small spot on his side, and he was pretty darn nice. He got nicknamed 'Mr. Perfect' when he was a baby, because he was so easy to work with, so quick to learn.

We called him Ace, because that's what he was. An Ace. The best card in the deck.

That little colt is a yearling now, and he won a buckle for his owner this year. He never says no, he always tries his best, gives his all, and he's a laid-back, easy-going colt with the mind of a superstar.

His full brother, born with a lot of white, was sold as soon as he was born. His name is Jack, another good card in the deck. He's at his new home, a show home, and he has a great future.

And Lucy is bred again to Willy. That $500 mare, that horse that wasn't tough enough to go through another cold winter, has more than paid for herself, over and over again.

Lucy is due to foal next spring, and then she's going to get a break. She's been a mother most of her life, and she's one heck of a mother. She foals easily, she has awesome babies, and she has the mind, and the temperament, of a winner. And she's proven it, with her babies.

Lucy is a keeper for us; she has a home for life. She will never be sold; she's ours forever.

If you drove by and saw her in the pasture, you would probably just see a stout little sorrel mare with a cute face. You probably wouldn't give her a second look; she isn't a flashy, gorgeous mare.

But when we look at Lucy, we see Ace's mom, and Jack's mom, and we see a mare that has given us so much more than we ever expected out of her.

We see a mare that is one in a million, a mare that is a producer, a mare that crosses so well with Willy, and a mare that has a home for life.

We almost passed that little mare up that day at the sale; we almost walked away from a mare that has helped Willy get winning babies out on the show circuit.

Something made us choose Lucy that day, a day that we just went to look. We went to look, and we came home with something more precious than gold.

We came home with Lucy.

Reporter Carol Reiter can be reached at (209) 385-2486 or creiter@mercedsun-star.com.