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| A Colt Called Valentine |
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I remember the first time I saw Valentine. It was January of 1996 and my dad had
agreed to buy me a colt to train during my last year of high school. We found an
ad in the paper and went to take a look, trailer in tow.
He was wild. The owner, a big brusque farmer in brown coveralls told us he hadn't
been handled much, and had been "out with the mares". The little black stud colt
circled the corral at a fast trot, eyeing us warily. My dad said to me, "Well,
what do you think?"
I looked past the shaggy coat, cocklebur infested mane, and too-small-for-a-two-year-old
frame. There were dreams inside my head that only a horse crazy teenager could
entertain, and I saw a diamond in the rough that I wanted to be mine. We backed
our trailer up to the gate, ran him in, wrote a check, and took him home.
Bringing Valentine home was kind of like keeping a deer in a cage. Though we put
him in the corral with an older gelding and offered feed and treats, there was
nothing we could tempt him with that he would allow us to touch him or even get
very close. It wasn't until we had the vet out to geld him that we got a halter
on him, and that was a struggle. We left the lead rope dragging, in hopes that
we could catch him again and work on gentling him.
Within weeks I could touch his nose, but he wanted to keep his face toward you,
and you could only pet him as far back as you could reach while he was facing you.
Any step towards his side, or sudden movement, and he would be gone in a flash,
tearing the leadrope through your hands and running wild. I asked a trainer friend
of mine to come help me, and we set up an afternoon to work on Valentine.
I have always wondered if there was a reason behind Valentine's fear, if he'd been
abused by the man we'd bought him from, because the colt was especially afraid of
men. My sisters and I could pet him if we were slow and quiet, but if a man walked
into the pen, Val would go into full flight mode. So I wasn't sure how he was going
to react to the trainer, who was a man.
The day the trainer arrived, I had Val inside the barn with a halter and lead on.
I held him tightly while the trainer took the lead, and I warned him that the colt
would run once he got the chance. We opened the barn door to lead him out into the
open corral, and Valentine shot past the trainer at a full run, almost tearing the
rope out of his hands as he'd done so many times with me. But the trainer held him
through a terrible fight, and they finally stood there, panting, on the two ends
of the lead rope. My colt was strained and tense, and very frightened. The trainer
did a series of what he called "busting him out" where he'd let the colt have enough
slack to get started running away, and then pull the rope tight and the colt would
snap around to face him on the end of the rope. This went on until Val was too tired
to run anymore, and would allow the trainer to pet him all over. Then the trainer
had me come up, pet Valentine, take off his halter, put it back on, and he stood
there calmly, tired, defeated. I thought we had made great strides in getting him
to accept a person handling him.
But the next morning when I went to feed, the black colt could hardly walk. He had
sprained one of his hind hocks, and it was swollen over twice its normal size. My
dad helped me give him bute and a shot of penicillin, and we thought it would get
better. But within days, the colt wasn't eating, and I knew it was really serious.
One morning I came out to feed before school, and Val was lying down inside the barn.
Always before he would stand up if anyone came near, but this time he just lay there
and made no attempt to stand up. I started crying, because I knew he was not going
to recover.
I ran to the house to tell my dad, and he came out and we lifted Valentine to his feet.
I couldn't look at his leg, my dad just shook his head and said, "It's bad, it's bad."
He told me to tell my little black horse goodbye, and as I wrapped my arms around that
fuzzy black neck, I cried like I've never cried before or since. I promised that I'd
write his story and make the dreams I'd had for him come true someday in a book.
And I had to go to school while they put him down.
It was heartbreaking to think that my little colt had done nothing wrong, yet had
lost his life because I had tried to gentle him and make him into something. It was
easy to blame myself, blame the trainer, and blame my dad for not calling the vet.
There were lessons learned in that, but the biggest lesson of all was that I had to
deal with all of my grief and learn that crying for Valentine would never bring him back.
Every time I see a black horse, I think of everything Valentine could have been
and the adventures we could have had together. When I was a little girl, I asked
my mom if our pets who died would be in heaven. My mom said, "If it takes seeing
your pet again to make you happy in heaven, then they'll be there, because God
promises us that there will be no tears in heaven." I'm not a little girl anymore,
but no one can convince me that I won't see my black colt in heaven someday. He
will always be my Valentine.
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