For those of you on FB....

[Pam]

please don't spill the beans yet until it's a done deal. Some of you know that Dave and I have been considering changing directions with the farm after what happened to Rusty. Dave would like me to get some mares of my own and breed them with the intention of selling the resulting foals as yearlings. I have the opportunity right now to get two really NICE mares, both bred to great stallions. One I would own mare and foal outright, the second is a foal share deal, but I would own the mare, with the option of breeding back to the same stallion next year. I have right of first refusal on both of them so crossing fingers that everything works out. Dave is in Boston until Friday, so I'm hoping I can get all the i's dotted and t's crossed before he gets back. You know the saying "while the cat's away, the mice will play."

[adcooper]

Hey, this could work! I hope it all lines up nicely for you and Dave. You work so hard.

[Sarahsmom]

I must have missed it. What happened to Rusty?

[Goalie]

sounds good Pam. Let us know.

[Smay]

And we're talking about thoroughbreds this time, right? Not Standardbreds? This will be so cool, and I'm sure whatever "business" you're contemplating with horses, will be successful! Good luck!

[Pam]

Aug 21, 2013 6:18:30 GMT -5 Sarahsmom said:

I must have missed it. What happened to Rusty?

I'm sorry, I thought I posted the story here too. I looked back, but don't see it. I was pretty much in a fog at the time I think. I copied this from the Equifriends board:

"First off, TY Kit for posting the FB message for me. I was in Plattsburgh, about 3 hours away and only had internet on my phone. Yes, we lost Rusty Friday night. I still feel like I'm living in a nightmare. My single biggest fear ever since we bought this place was the road. It's a 55 mph zone and fairly busy. The part that keeps turning over and over and over in my mind is that we had a fence up until just a few days before this specifically to prevent this from happening. We are building a new one and took the old one down so we could start working on it.

The worst thing though is that Dave was here alone. I was still on the road, about half an hour away from Plattsburgh with Joey when he called me. He was in tears "Please tell me you have Rusty with you." At that point he hadn't found him yet. He had gotten a call from another nearby farm that a horse had gotten hit in the road so he ran out to the pasture looking for him and didn't find him there. Then he ran out to the road and didn't see anything so he called me. After I told him I didn't have Rusty, he called Jean-marie back for more details and learned that the accident was around the curve from us and nearly a mile down the road. He drove down there and identified Rusty for the Sheriff's Dept, then came back to get the tractor to move him off the road. Then he went back and caught the other three and put them into the barn since he still didn't know how Rusty got out. All the time, I was still waiting for him to call back before I told Bethany who had driven up to Plattsburgh with her trailer earlier in the day. She is the official photographer at this show every year.

Dave finally called back and confirmed it was indeed Rusty, but insisted that I stay at the show with Joey and to try and have a good weekend with him since he wasn't coming home with me. At that point, I told Bethany what had happened and she actually took it better than I expected. I'm sure it will hit her hard later on when she's not so busy. Dave says he's really glad we were gone, but I wish I could have been here for him. He was devastated, blaming himself at first, thinking there was something he could have done to prevent it. The first phone call, he was frantic. "I don't know what to do, I don't know what to do". I told him to call Jean-marie back and he did, then I think he was just working kind of by rote after that. He went out early Sat morning and brought him home and buried him by our old friend Chevy in what he's now calling our horsey graveyard. He got some mane hair for Bethany and Lauren, Bethany's roommate who I call my "other daughter". Lauren loved Rusty almost as much as Bethany, she learned to ride on him, too.

After Dave buried Rusty, he went looking for how he got out and found that he had gone straight through the NE corner of the fence, which would be consistent with him trying to get away from fireworks from the neighbors who were setting them off the night before. He had to have hit the fence at a full gallop because he broke a corner post right off and sent one of the boards 30 feet out into the adjacent pasture. I am going to search the pasture today and see if possibly one landed in the field because I found a couple out there last summer. If I do, I'm going to report them. These are not just little bottle rockets that these folks send up, they look like the stuff the pros do. I've been tempted to call them in before, but didn't because they ARE neighbors. I won't give them that courtesy again. The one thing that Rusty has always been afraid of is lights that don't belong in the night sky. A simple flashlight would send him to the other end of the field. Spotlights freaked him out. He hated camera flashes. I know he had to have been totally panicked because he's gotten loose before and only went into the barn or hung out by the others. It doesn't make sense that he would run nearly a mile down the road, away from the herd, especially since we've NEVER even ridden him in that direction. He was just running blindly I think.

Anyways, that's what we think. We will never know for sure what sent him out into the night, we only have our suspicions. I supposed it doesn't really matter, nothing can change what happened and we just have to deal with it. Thanks everyone for your warm thoughts, it truly does help to know that others care.

This picture was taken just a few days before we lost him.

"

[Pam]

Since this happened, I talked to the vet who did the surgery on Rusty and he said that his best guess is that Rusty's uncharacteristic reaction to the fireworks, which have gone on every summer since we moved here 11 years ago, were caused by the anesthesia from his surgery just a couple of weeks earlier. He says that general anesthesia can affect cognitive functioning for a LONG time (up to three months) after surgery. We will never know for sure, but at least it gives us a possible explanation which does help a little bit.

Anyways, Dave is terrified that the same thing could happen to a boarder's horse and he really wants to just have our own horses on the property. Some of the mares and foals that are here are extremely valuable animals and although we are pretty well protected by our LLC and also lots of insurance, NOTHING can stop someone from dragging you into court, even if you ultimately win.

Yes, Suzy, these are TB. SB are really not worth much as far as sales go. SB are not worth anything until they get to the track and I have no desire to get into the track life. I took SB horse training about 100 years ago in high school and decided way back then that track life is definitely not for me. I do like the sales. They are fun, exciting, you meet a million people and they only last a few days, lol, then it's back to the quiet of the farm. TB yearling sales are very lucrative if you do your homework on the bloodlines that cross well as well as those that are selling well, and you do a good job prepping the horses. I love broodmares and foals. I love working with the babies, making them into good citizens so that they have a better shot at a good life after the track. I like doing prep. It's awesome seeing the shaggy field horses morph into the shiny, fit, gorgeous horses you see parading on stage at a sale. Dave is all for me sticking with breeding, just not with other people's horses. Onward and upward.

[ZenRider]

Good luck Pam with your new venture!