We Made the Front Page, but…

For those of you that can’t read the Temple Daily Telegram’s article without subscribing…

Last week I took Summer Cloud out for a training/conditioning drive, and had barely made it off the property when I was stopped by two very nice ladies in an SUV. They wanted to take photos, which is pretty normal because for some reason people are fascinated by ponies driving in carts when they don’t give my big horses a second glance driving by. Anyway as they were snapping away, one of the ladies explained she was a photographer for the Temple Daily Telegram. She wanted to use the photos for the paper, and when I gave her some basic details including the farm name, she had additional questions, and then said she would have a reporter contact me because now that she knew more about me, these weren’t just photos, they were a story.

I was contacted a few days later by the reporter, who was very nice, but during the conversation, I could tell some details were a bit confusing to him, but he didn’t ask follow-up questions so I figured, he had whatever details he needed. I don’t subscribe to the Telegram, but did ask some friends to keep an eye out for when the article ran. When I shared the link of the article, many people were disappointed they couldn’t read without paying. Well, I understand your frustration, because I had to buy a 7 day subscription to read an article about myself. I’m kind of glad that the article does require a subscription to read, because there were several large facts that were incorrect, and I wouldn’t want anyone thinking that we were trying to misrepresent ourselves and the current situation.

So here is another version of the article following the same story line, with the facts…

This whole operation really started out with Beau Pony, which was a rescue purchase of a sort, but not the reason the farm is named Hard Luck. The Hard Luck really started with Odessa, who we found on Facebook. She was located in Magnolia, but she wasn’t abandoned like the Telegram article said. She had an owner, that owner just couldn’t afford to feed her, so she was literally a sack of bones when we went to see her. We actually bought her, but the article does have it correct, my husband wasn’t happy about the purchase because he didn’t think she’d survive the two hour ride back to our place. She turned out to be one of the best horses I’ve ever owned, truly my heart horse.

We purchased what would become Gardner Hard Luck Horse Farm (there is no “‘s” on Gardner) in April 2016, and brought Odessa home Memorial Day weekend of that year. From there we went on to purchase a wreck of a Mustang, and two other starvation/neglect Appaloosa’s. At this point the name stuck as I was joking about all of our animals being hard luck horses. The Telegram does have it correct that while we are a rescue horse farm, we are not a rescue. We do NOT take in animals or drop offs, and we do NOT rehome. I try my best to make a promise to all animals we bring on the farm, that we are their forever home to ensure they do not end up in bad situations again. I do my best to make them all solid equine citizens and give them skills that make them exponentially more valuable than they were when they arrived. In the unlikely event I would have to part with any of them, they stand a better chance now of going to good homes.

From there the article went on to discuss the mustangs, and had some of those facts incorrect. There are close to 87,000 wild or more like feral horses and burros on Bureau of Land Management (BLM) lands, which is approximately 55,000 more than the BLM feels the land can support. BLM rounds up horses in scheduled and emergency round ups and offers them up for adoption to reduce herd numbers or prevent animals dying due to lack of resources on the range. We have adopted 4 mustangs and 3 burros that currently live on the farm. We tipped out another ten or so mustangs, meaning we brought them home and gentled them for other people.

What the article got incorrect is that I don’t drive the mustangs at all. Not because I’m not open to the prospect, but I just don’t have full horse size equipment. I still have equipment that I need to purchase for another horse goal, and Darling Husband will lose it if I purchase another wagon because we’re out of storage space. The Telegram confused the mustangs with the ponies, who are all rescues and almost all of them are at some stage of driving, but as I’ve mentioned many times in this blog, I have a ten year goal of creating an 8 up hitch of ponies similar to the Budweiser Clydesdale hitch except it will be smaller and there will be zero color uniformity in the horses. I currently have the equipment and ponies trained to do a 4 up hitch. I need to purchase 4 more sets of harness and train 4 more ponies. Summer the pony pictured in the Telegram article is a pony that no one was interested in at Cleburne and the only bid came from a known kill buyer, so my husband stepped in.

We occasionally do contract livestock hauling jobs, that is how we ended up with a Thoroughbred in the same or worse shape we found that first Appaloosa, Odessa. There is a whole blog post about Stella here if you are interested. Anyway Darling Husband was sent to pick up a horse that had been purchased unseen by the buyer. Upon arrival, Darling Husband sent the buyer a photo of the horse’s current condition at which point he backed out. Darling Husband could not in good conscience leave the horse in it’s current state, so she came home to our farm, where we rehabbed her and rehomed her with a friend of mine that was in the market for a Thoroughbred riding prospect. She is fat and sassy living her best life here in Belton. Occasionally we deliver hay to her owner and I get to see her!

When the reporter asked how long I’d been in the horse business, I responded “My whole life.” I went on to explain that my family used and worked horses on the farm, and a set of sleigh bells I use in parades have been in my family over 200 years, heirlooms. I also explained, I love getting the horses out and being the underestimated underdogs when we compete. We’ve been to many shows where the cost of the horses we are competing against are easily 10 to 20 times more than mine, but we manage to hold our own. Johnny Cash was even the Reserve Champion Adult Amateur score at his first ever dressage show. Which means he had the second highest dressage score of all the Adult Amateur horses that day.

In closing I explained to the Telegram, that currently the farm is at capacity. We just don’t have the room for any more horses or ponies at this time. Also, I’m struggling to keep everyone in some semblance of work, while working a full time job, and being a mom to two little humans, an infant and a 7 year old right now. All in all the Telegram was a good article, just had a few items mixed up.