This was something I had to write for school when I was seventeen. I'd like to work on it when I'm not completely burnt out from situations similar to the one below.
Two years ago I would not have believed that that was the same horse. Salem was stabled at my childhood barn when I was fifteen, when I first met him I was in awe. Looking at a handsome horse is never tiring. To begin with, Salem comes from a breed called Percheron which is a type of Draft horse. In short, he is huge, tall basketball players and half-giants can peek over his back, the exceptions end there. He was completely black with an everlasting shaggy winter coat. Despite his lack of grooming, he was gorgeous with an extremely kind personality. He was bought at the New Holland Auction which is where a large number of Amish men go to trade horses. For the Amish, horses are more like farm machinery than pets, they treat them kindly for they are “God’s creatures” but horses like Salem have to tough it out and do without daily brushings or modern-day veterinarians. Salem was a healthy full-figured horse but rough around the edges. Salem ’s owner was also rough around the edges, Helen was loud and nervous. Everything she knew about horses was learned on a beginner trail ride and Monty Robert’s hearsay. Mascara and dark eye shadow always filled the fine wrinkles around her eyes and her red fingernails were about two inches long. There is a saying in the horse world, "green on green makes black and blue". Meaning a new rider on a green horse is the perfect chemistry for bodily harm, Helen got lucky the day she bid on Salem. Salem, an old forgiving horse was the only type of horse this woman could've handled.
On a november night I was cantering a horse in the main ring when I heard shrieking so horrible you'd think a mother pterodactyl's nest was being raided. Salem came trotting up the path from the bridle path with his head pressed against his chest and mouth foaming against the bit. With crazed orange hair catching wind behind her, Helen was rocked to the back of her western saddle, reins held in a death grip under her chin. It was obvious to any horse person that something had probably spooked Salem and he had flinched out on trails thus scaring Helen who promptly began screaming which, in turn scared the poor horse even more. To this day I'm not sure how she did it, but Helen fell off and made the long journey from the back of her Percheron to the pavement. The whole situation was nothing to scream about, Helen, as I would learn in the next few months is a special case.
As far as my own limited teenaged knowledge went, Helen injured her back significantly and couldn't work. Because she couldn't work, she couldn't pay for her horse to be taken care of by professionals. Instead of giving him away to a good home, she chose to move him to a rough board facility. With facilities that call themselves rough board, the promises made between owner of the property and owner of the horse tend to be loosely based. Generally in exchange for a cheap place to keep your horse, you must be responsible for at the very least: feeding twice a day, turn out, and cleaning the stall. Along with arranging your own vet and farrier appointments. Now rough board isn't a death sentence if you know what you're doing, or you truly desperately want to learn and have someone pointing you in the the right direction. Helen qualified under neither one of those categories.
I'm not sure what she saw in a horse maybe a status symbol, a plaything to take out on weekends, maybe she sat at home and psychotically watched old westerns. She met her match at the new barn a man who seemed perplexed as everyone else as to how he managed to constantly have a circulating herd of unbroke crippled ponies. His name was Tony and his business, Tony's Ponies. Tony was the man that after school specials warned you about, if a man like Tony offered you ice cream or a puppy-- you run. It was a running joke, just who was more blatantly ignorant Helen or Tony. The humor got lost in the dozens of ponies Tony bought from and returned to auction after they had foundered or been considered a danger to society. People whispered that the horses were mistreated, that children were endangered and yet no one stopped them. Salem attended Tony's Ponies Parties as well and while he certainly wasn't a pony, he was a good deal safer than most of anything Tony brought home from sale. The horses spent their weekends at fairs walking on concrete lame, dehydrated, and disheartened. There became a point where not a single horse of theirs would walk past a certain point, knowing the trailer lay just beyond their line of vision.
Salem choked later on that winter. When a horse chokes their whole lifestyle changes, they become much more high maintenance. At the risk of choking again, Salem was limited to watered down hay, soaked alfalfa cubes, and rich grains to keep weight on. Helen stopped listening at "no dry hay ever" perhaps thinking she'd save a buck, she fed him a sopping bucket of poor quality grain twice a day. Even a year later she complained of her back pains and rarely cleaned his stall. Every now and then she'd wrangle a barn rat (a girl without a horse dying to muck a stall in exchange for riding time) into cleaning a stall that was filled giraffe-ass deep with shit. The ASPCA was constantly mentioned but never called, under the assumption the whole barn would close. He stood day in, day out in a dark stall stinking of ammonia with his ribs and hip bones rapidly growing more prominent. When the vet came to do spring shots she told Helen she would come back in two weeks and if there was no improvement she's have the horse seized. But there was no coming back from it for Salem because of his sudden drop in weight, at this point he weighed half of what he was supposed to, he foundered. The door to his stall bowed out and threatened to collapse under the weight that his great frame could no longer endure.
Bones stuck out in every direction, Salem looked like a black umbrella electrocuted and shredded to pieces. His dull coat that painfully stretched over his spine, hips, and ribs encased slow and shallow breathing. He was taken outside and laid out on the lawn like he was part of a garage sale. He was something broken and unfixable but something someone deluded themselves into believing was profitable. He was put down with Helen sobbing loudly. This is only hoping that those who passed his stall daily, who whispered about abuse, and yet did nothing more than top off his water bucket will not live so quietly or passively.
