Okay, so the history of Peppi.
When Peppi was young, she was trained for halter and 30 days of riding. They really focused on the halter. When she was three she became the Illinois State Halter Champion.
Not long after winning, she developed a limp. The owners couldn't figure out what was wrong with her, so they took her to the farrier. Turns out she had Navicular Disease. The owners decided that they didn't want to continue to show her, so they threw her out to live in a field full of cattle.
She stayed there until she was seven, when she was bought by a couple that we found out had kept her in a stall all the time, and would stab her in the ribs with the end of the cleaning fork to get her to move while they cleaned stalls.
She was "rescued" from that place and was taken to another home that didn't care for her. Peppi had a kicking problem (wonder why?
) so they decided it wasn't safe to go into her stall to feed her.
A friend of ours, who rescues horses, told us they had heard of Peppi, and that we should go check her out with them. We went and were just sick to our stomachs.
She was about 200lbs underweight, needed her feet trimmed, her skin was tougher than a cows (said the vet, who had to give her shots), and was just caked with dirt.
After talking to the owners, they decided that we could just have her, since they didn't like her anyways.
We get her home and fed her (I've never seen a horse eat so fast in my life) and introduced her to our other horses. Everything was going good.
Like I said before, Peppi had a kicking issue. She also had a biting problem, bad biting problem. We couldn't blame her though, she had it rough and had to learn to defend herself somehow.
So after several weeks, she was settling down, and decided she just loved the attention. We worked on groundwork all the time, and decided to see how she rides. Of course, I was the one who had to get on her.
I just remember our family friend and his wife coming over to see her, and he yelled across the field at me (who was working with Leo), "Hey! Bring Leo's halter and lead over here!" So I did. I had no idea what he was going to do with her..
He puts the halter on her and clips the lead on one side, throws it over her neck, and attaches it to the other side, looks at me and says, "Here, I'll give you a boost." I replied with, "Are you crazy?!"
and of course he was like, "No, what's the worst that could happen? You fall off?"
He didn't seem to take into consideration that she was almost 17 hands tall, and it would hurt.
So, I got up on Peppi and didn't have to try at all to get her to go, she was all for it.
She had a limp, and wasn't neck reined, but both of us survived. Thank goodness.
We had to constantly have to get special shoes for her, ones that raised her heel because of the Navicular, because she was constantly losing them. We were told it was because her feet were too soft.
It took us several years to get her feet to the point that she could keep shoes on. It was only about 5 months before her death that she was completely painless.
Both my grandma and I had been kicked by Peppi. Myself, was kicked with both back feet in the thighs. I had two hoof-shaped bruises for several months, but no broken bones.
My grandma was cow-kicked in the knee and also stepped on her foot, which resulted in her going to the hospital because her kneecap filled with blood and had to have surgery on her foot.
We were told by several people that we needed to get rid of her because she wasn't safe, but we just couldn't give up on her.
I continued to work with her, my sister and I even showed her sometimes. We bred Peppi with another Quarter Horse stud that looked just like her, only with bigger feet an a stockier body. The result was Amber.
Amber and Peppi won Grand Champion Mare & Foal at our county fair, and 2nd place at State fair.
A few weeks after State Fair, I came home from a friend's house and noticed the horses running around in a panic. I notice that Peppi isn't with them, but think that maybe my grandma took her to the vet (she was always getting herself hurt) and that they were mad because she was gone.
I call my grandma and ask her if she had Peppi. "No, she should be there" was the reply I got, so I decided to go looking for her. I walked everywhere and there was no sign of her, so I called my grandma back and was like, "You guys need to come home, something's wrong, Peppi's not here."
After about twenty minutes, my grandma and grandpa arrive at the house (they were playing cards with my great-grandparents) and my grandma and I go out looking, again. This time when we looked, we decided to look down in the wooded area that the horses rarely go.
Sure enough we find Peppi, laying in the woods, dead.
After the initial shock that one of our horses was dead, we noticed that the tree next to her had horse hair on it, and it didn't look like she struggled.
Several friends came over to see what had happened and we came to the conclusion that she died from running into a tree.
Seriously.
We couldn't think of why or how she managed to do that, other than maybe she was being chased and turned right into it.
The next day, a friend of ours came over and helped us bury her. We made her a little tombstone too. She was fourteen.
At least she's pain free now and she had a good last couple of years with people who loved her.
Here's the two at County Fair.
