Before and After

Meet Honey. We "rescued" her almost a year ago. You'll see from the photos that she was in a bad way. I went to look at her to use as a lesson horse and was pretty shocked to see her in such condition. I decided I was taking her home whether she made a good lesson horse or not. I took her to vet pretty quick to make sure she didn't have any health problems. Turns out the only thing she needed was some groceries. I put a bale of grass hay in her stall, started her on a cup of senior feed a day and waited. I increased the senior feed by a little bit at a time until she was getting about 5 lbs. a day. She was de-wormed pretty heavily to help aid her weight gain process. It was 2 months before she was even healthy enough to start exercising.

I took the following pictures today. Honey is a happy, healthy 20 year old mare. She doesn't need grain to stay fit and enjoys horse cookies after her work outs. Turns out, this mare has been in the top 10 two times over at the Arabian Youth Nationals. She is fantastic with the kids and smaller adults. She is so well trained and so patient with new riders. She loves to have the attention the kids give to her when they come to ride her. In fact, the young girl riding her today is Maddy. She is going to be feed/leasing Honey. (They live next door.) Maddy has been taking lessons for a year and really wants her own horse. Honey doesn't have a kid of her own right now so I suggested they take her. They pay feed and maintenance costs and Maddy has her own horse to ride. You'll see from the picture of Honey's face that her eye is very different from the one above. She is happy, loved and comfortable.