Spirit

[KathyB]

The Story of Spirit

Back in June of 2008 I went to a horse auction. Just to look, we also wanted to see how much the donkey's were going for, since we had one to sell. As I was looking at the horses for sale before the auction started, I saw this really pretty brown and white pinto down at the end of one of the ailes. I walked over to her and started petting her. She was loving every minute of it. I did not know a whole lot about horses at this point, but I could tell this horse had a sweet personality. Although she was quite thin, she was the perfect size for my daughter. I had a horse trainer with me that day, and I asked her to take another look at this horse. When I brought her over to the mare, the lady who brought her to the auction was there. This lady was telling us that this horse was not a kids horse. I didn't believe it. We talked to the lady some more, and I really wanted to buy this horse. We decided that if this horse went through the auction ring it would only bring about 75 dollars due to the fact that she was so underweight. We offered the lady 100 dollars for the horse whose name we found out was Spirit. She accepted. Now we had to figure out how to get Spirit home, we then asked the seller if she could truck Spirit to our place. Which she did. Now, we had to put alot of weight on Spirit before we could even use her for anything. It took us until October of 2008 to put close to 200 pounds on her. Then I started working her on a lunge line...then letting my daughter ride her. She was a good horse, we didn't think she knew a whole lot since she was only 5. But everytime she didn't know what we were asking of her when we were riding her, she would just stop. Now my daughter has been riding her for almost a year now, and showing her in 4-h at the walk/trot level. I had some more experience riders work with her on cantering but she gets quite fast in that gait.
Spirit is special to us because we saved her, and also has a wonderful personality. When I go to the barn to do chores she is right there with her nose in the window, waiting to come in. There are 8 other horses in our small herd and she is probably in the middle of the pecking order.