By: Lindsey Jolliffe

I was ten when this all took place in a town called port orchard. I had two horses that I loved truly one was diamond who I had been currently riding in 4-h he wasn’t the best but he was mine & that’s all that mattered. My other horse was a 26-year-old pony named brownie he was the best ever & he liked coke. One mooring a couple of months after fair I woke up to my moms tears. I asked what’s wrong she said its diamond he got hurt really bad. I asked is a vet here she said no I couldn’t get a hold of one. She said I tried to get a hold of Deanna (are best friends) but the line is busy she said wait by the phone incase the vet calls.

Before I could ask her were she was going she was gone. Then are car pulled back in the driveway she asked if the vet called back I said no. Then I asked if I could see him she said yes so I went out to see him it was worse then I expected the back left knee was draining and right bellow it was a severe cut. I asked is Deanna her she said not yet but soon.

By: Laura and Angela Cardarelli

Howdy, my name is Angela. I would like to share a story with you about a retired show horse named Bucky. When Bucky could no longer participate in horse shows, he discovered a special way to feel useful.

By: Audrey Pavia

The first time I ever touched her was on a damp winter night. She had just been ridden in her fourth jumping lesson that day, and the teenaged girl who had gotten off of her had handed the reins to me at the trainer’s request.

By: Jan Eckles

I held my hand in front of me, unable to perceive its shape, its size, color or dimension. My heart crumbled. My blindness was real. like a candle blown off by an unexpected draft, my self-confidence, motivation and purpose melted leaving my world as shapeless wax.

“When the retina ceases to function properly, there is no vision,” explained the ophthalmologist. “It~s like the film in the camera, without it there is no image to be transmitted to the brain.
These words echoed in my mind and haunted my soul. The only escape from this torment were the memories of my days as a little girl with full sight.

By: Nicole Buckner

I remember what it was like when I was eight years old, literally yearning for a horse. I knew I couldn’t have one, since my dad was out of work for two years due to a bad injury in his knee. We had no money for a horse. My mom had loved them as a child and still does, and she promised me once my dad was healed and got his job back, I would get riding lessons. So for two long years, I prayed and prayed, and my dad finally got his job back. Now it was my turn. My sister and I took riding lessons at my mom’s friends’ house for a year. I rode their awesome little pony named “Stoney” and my sister rode a little paint pony mare named “Coco.” I loved it, and riding lessons once a week was a whole lot better than spending hours in my room reading about them and looking at pictures, sometimes even crying over not having one. I was one step closer to horses, which was good enough for me.

By: Barbara Briggs Ward

When Scottie, the little Morgan, was found abandoned in Vermont, there wasn’t much hope that Scottie would live.
Scottie had been abused and neglected.  Scottie hadn’t had anything to eat or drink for a long time.  No one had brushed her.  No one had cared anything about her.  She’d been left outside.  In the rain.  In the cold.  Alone and sad.  And very, very sick.

BY: Sarah Elmassian

It was early 1996…
“If you got a horse, what type would it be?”
I paused while making the bed, and pulled a blank. I had never really thought about it before, but it made sense. It had to be specific, a “horse” could be anything, and in this case I knew in my heart not just any horse would do.

By: Linda Bruinsma

Trusty came to be my new riding horse after he spent five years of failed attempts to be a race horse. His previous owner kept him racing even though he had never won a single race in five years. He said it was a good tax write off. Still, Trusty gave his all, and even endured injuries trying his best to win. Finally the owner decided to sell his outcast racehorse. I was there to take him home looking forward to introducing Trusty to English riding.

On a windy day in mid-August, my 9-year-old son and I stood in amazement with a group of about 8-10 women and one man. We had just spent 3 hours rounding up the first 2 of the 15 “wild” Appaloosas that we would rescue over the next week. Unlike the methods traditionally associated with rounding up “wild” horses, we used no ropes, no whips, no harshness against these animals that had never known the gentle touch of a human.

This horse story contains an emotional horse poem that involves fine emotions that flourish between a horse and this master. The emotions tend to break all boundaries as the level of bondage reaches at its peak….

A True Bondage Between Jackie and Skippy| An Emotional Horse Poem

By:  Lea Ann Hungate

My husband and I had finally gotten our first horse and had decided we wanted to learn to ride better. We went to some small local shows and gymkhanas and finally met a young lady named Jackie. Jackie ended up giving us lessons for a couple of years.

Jackie’s horse Skippy was a beautiful buckskin stud colt, of whom Jackie was very proud. She had bred her older mare to get him and had raised him from birth. She spent hours and hours with Skippy, teaching him his basic ground manners and then moving on to some round pen and lunge line work.