Here is a shot of Tradewind, our formerly wild Corolla stallion at the World Horse Expo in Maryland yesterday. He is being ridden by Karen McCalpin, Executive Director of the Corolla Wild Horse Fund.
Tradewind is there showing the audience how much equine beauty and grace can come in a small package.
Some might call the picture blurry, but I think that it is perfect for Tradewind. It looks like something out of a dream. As it should . His life has had a dream like quality about it.
Once his life was a pure nightmare.
Tradewind was captured because he was foundered to the point of complete lameness and one of his hooves was over grown and abscessed. This beautiful stallion was completely crippled. Sharon Sluss of Rainbow's End Farm in Suffolk was his initial adopter. She began his hoof rehabilitation with skillful natural hoof are trimming techniques.
He came to us while feeling much better but still lame on the front right hoof. Continued natural hoof care trimming and exercise drove the lameness away.
He has not been lame a day since that time.
Like nearly all of the Corollas, he was very easy to train to saddle. He gentled so well that he was often ridden by children on long trail rides with mares in the group. He is one of the main stallions in our off site breeding program.
In 2011 he proved a great point for every formerly wild horse, every stallion,every once crippled horse and every small horse in the country. During that year he carried me 206 hours in the woods on trails. That does not count how many hours he carried other riders. When we began the year I weighed 222 pounds and at the end of the year I had dropped about ten pounds, as I recall. Very few of those hours were done at a walk. Nearly all were gaiting at his fast paced shuffle and a bit was cantering.
He became the picture of health as both of us worked hard to get in every hour on the trail possible.
He went long enough to win the Horse of the Americas Registry's "National Pleasure Trail Horse of The Year Award."
He once hobbled in a nightmare of crippling pain. Now he gaits along at a fast pace for as long as far as a rider can go. He has done several rides of fifty miles in a day.
And he is healthy. And he is happy.
And he is living in a dream. Just like the picture shows.
Tradewind is an important horse, not because he is spectacular example of his breed,(which he is) but because of his story. Crippled to the point where most vets and "horse people," would have been digging a hole. Everything this formerly crippled horse has accomplished, he has done against odds set by the established horse world, and against what many would say is common sense. Sense, is anything but common. He has never worn a shoe, does not live in a barn, no cushy horse killing life of sweet feed and no exercise...everything he has done has been with what he brought to the table, with a little natural care and an understanding of what the horse needs. What is important, and I hope will not be missed by much of the masses, is that most of the things "The Horse World," (tm) would say about him are at best old wives tales, at worst out and out commercially driven lies.
ReplyDeleteHe is living a dream, and not a pipe dream drummed up by fringe thinking, a dream forged of simple knowledge of what a horse really needs, hay, water, mineral, and natural care..solid (and minimal) natural hoof care which does not involve shoes, or blankets.
These concepts can save, and help make sounder, if not totally sound, horses crippled by too much care. and no, this not only applies to mustangs, it applies equally to modern bred horses as well. Go ask Comet if you don't believe me.
No, Tradewind is important because he is a shining ambassador of what is possible with simple, natural horse care, his meesage needs to be sung far and wide, and listened to with much more rapt attention than the cute lady in tight jeans hawking the latest miracle cure for your horse on TV...
Come to think of it, his hooves are perfect for operating that TV remote..one hoof, and several hundred pounds of Corolla muscle ought to do it. -Lloyd