One of the best things about living in Montana was being able to train and show horses. At one point, my dad decided to start raising horses. He bartered for a registered Arabian stallion. He was a dappled gray, with beautiful markings. In the fall, my sister and I would ride one horse while we would lead two other horses or ponies about a mile down the road to a hundred acre field that belonged to a friend where the horses would graze for a couple months before the snow came.
My sister and I had all the horses down the street except for the stallion. He was so upset that we had taken all his ‘girlfriends’, so I saddled him up and took him for a long ride, trying to give him some attention and wear him out. After our ride, I took off his saddle and set it on the corral poles while I brushed him down. When I finished, I stepped out of the corral, and reached for the saddle hanging on the poles. Based on what happened next, my guess is that this stallion was not happy that we not only took all his ‘girlfriends’ away, but also I took him out and about, but I didn’t take him where I had taken all the other horses. With his ears pinned back and nostrils flared, that horse lunged for me, reaching his head over the corral poles. I dropped the saddle that I had just picked up from the corral poles, raised my right arm to protect myself, and found myself swinging back and forth with my feet off the ground like a rag doll. The horse was not trying to eat my arm, but he was letting me know who was boss. I heard a scream and a snapping sound that was coming from our house. As I was flapping around with my feet off the ground, I saw my mom out of the corner of my eye. She had grabbed a whip and was popping that whip and screaming at the horse while running as fast as I have ever seen her run. Right before she reached us, that stallion saw her coming, he let go of my arm, and I fell to the ground. My mom helped me up and we headed off to the hospital. The x-ray showed the perfect dent in my radius where the horse’s teeth had clamped down and was broken the rest of the way though that bone. This was back in the day before every middle schooler had a computer, and with a broken arm, the next six weeks I couldn’t write, and got out of 90% of my homework.
I was very lucky that day that my mom saw what was happening when our stallion took his aggressions out on me. My mom was really upset with the horse and wanted to get rid of him. I needed to walk a fine line; I REALLY didn’t want to give up on the stallion, yet I needed to respect the fact that my mom was really uncomfortable with me being around the stallion. I talked to my parents asking them to let me get back on that horse. I asked them to show mercy on that frustrated animal. That horse was not mean, he just didn’t understand what was happening. He just needed to be shown some love and a little mercy. That stallion turned out to be a sweet horse, that was easy to train and learned to love people as much as we loved him.
“Be merciful, even as your Father is merciful.” Luke 6:36
