smellshorsey

S.C.'s Endangered Horse Breed, the Marsh Tacky

UPDATE 10:12 a.m. Really good story about the horse's history and efforts to save them at American Livestock Breeds Conservancy. Click on the link to the right ALBC Works with Owners & Others               to Conserve the Critically Endangered Marsh Tacky Horse

This photo is of a Marsh Tacky stallion, an endangered breed of horses descended from Spanish horses. There are only 150 of these tough little horses left. Though I live in S.C., I've only encountered one of these horses in my life. After reading about them, I think I need to get several. What's good about them? They're said to be sensible, athletic, extremely hardy horses who can handle anything. And with the price of hay, I'm very interested in horses that can survive on marsh grass. What's bad about them? Not so pretty and kind of small, though we all know that pretty is as pretty does.

Here's an excerpt from the story:

YONGES ISLAND, S.C. — During centuries of isolation on the Carolina sea islands, the short-legged, sway-backed marsh tacky horses became perfectly suited for toiling long hours in the swamps and oppressive humidity.

But their wild looks and workhorse reputation — their name comes from the old English word meaning "common" — didn't exactly make them prized among horse lovers. Today, only about 150 of them remain.

Now, breeders are coming together to save the tacky, whose ancestors were left by colonial Spanish explorers......

"You can work'em, you can ride'em. When you put them in swamps and mud like we have around here in the Deep South ... instead of panicking and floundering around, they can just plow right on through it."

Intelligent and superbly adapted to the Southern humidity and coastal marshes, tackies can be broken quickly and prove docile for even the youngest riders. They can survive on marsh grass and forage other horses won't eat — farmers and owners simply kept them tied up in their yards over the years.

"We haven't found anything they are not good at," said Jeanette Beranger, a program manager with the American Livestock Breeds Conservancy. "They jump like rabbits, have a lot of endurance and can thrive on nothing.".....

"I don't think they are ever going to overtake the quarterhorse in popularity," she said. But they are ideal "if somebody is looking for an easy keeper that is safe with children."

The tackies' colonial Spanish strain comes from the same ancestors as cracker horses in Florida and bankers from the Outer Banks of North Carolina. But DNA testing has found that the tackies are a separate breed, with unique characteristics thanks to their relative isolation. (go to this link for the complete story)

How my horses got into fiction

I keep wanting to blog about a really funny incident that happened with a Shetland pony my father bought for my nephew. The pony got his nose stuck in a box....and then....

But I've already written this episode and countless others, into my fiction. The overall story is fiction -- I made it up -- but some of the components are my real horses.

So, for today's post, I'm going to link to the story that has the pony-with-the-nose-in-the-box episode in it. The story is strange in a number of ways. First, it was supposed to be a story about a controlling grandmother who bought her granddaughter a pony so the family couldn't move away without great heartache to the granddaughter. (This I made up.) But the grandmother never made it into the story. The original concept did have a saddle in it. A western pony saddle.

And there's another unusual twist to the story. It is about a mother, daughter and father living in the country with horses. Sounds like my real life now. Except, when I wrote the story, I wasn't even pregnant.And we lived in the suburbs and I boarded my TB dressage/eventing horse elsewhere. My real horse was very much afraid of pigs and that part is real. And one thing that has always bothered me about the story, which I always intended to fix, is that the dressage exercises go in the wrong order. I tell you that so you know that I know better. I would tell more, but it would spoil the story.

If you've got a few minutes and like literary fiction, visit "Riding Past the Pigs" here or here. (Click on "Riding Past the Pigs".

Let me know what you think! I'm feeling very exposed here.

Two kinds of ponies

There are two kinds of ponies. Ones that have foundered, and ones that will founder.
                                                                                        -- Author Unknown

World's best pony. Ever.

While I'm putting up photos, here's one I can't resist. It's three years old now and not only has Lily grown, she has outgrown the pony she's on. A pony I can say is The World's Best Pony. (Click to enlarge.)

That's me on Lucy. Notice who has the blue and who has the red. My only excuse is that we weren't in the same division (thankfully!)

But back to the World's Best Pony. Her name is Annie Up and we picked her up from a riding school that was getting rid of all of its school horses and others that weren't A circuit quality. Annie looks like a dachshund (short and long), so she is not A circuit quality. She also will canter backwards across a field to kick another horse, and the child riding her will never even notice. Annie kicks. Annie is grumpy.

Annie will do EVERYTHING you ask. And not one thing more.

I have never paid as much for a horse as I paid for Annie. She'd been a school pony for six years, so I didn't bother to have her vetted. If she can be ridden every day and not be lame, she'll do. And I was right.

When Lily's seat wasn't very secure and she'd land on Annie's neck after a jump, Annie would stop. Paul and I were watching her ride, and what could have been a catastrophe (a horse running away with a little girl on her neck) was a non-event. Lily slid herself back into the saddle and said, "Thank goodness she has a neck."

And I said to Paul, "That's why I paid so much for that pony." (By the way, my idea of lots of money is probably a lot less money than your idea of lots of money. I'm pretty good at getting fabulous horses cheap.)

This photo is from Lily's first horse trial with Annie (and my first with Lucy). When we walked the courses, Lily got very upset that there were two jumps (one on cross country and one in stadium) that had bales of hay under them. "I'll never get Annie to jump those," Lily said.

"She's not afraid of hay," I said.

"No, but she'll stop and eat," Lily said. I told her she was crazy. Annie was lazy, but Annie was not a refuser.

The first time Lily had ever ridden Annie was a year or two before we bought her when Lily went to riding camp at that stable. Lily fell off the minute she got on Annie and Annie decided to eat. If you've been around horses and children, you know what happened. Annie put her head down to graze, Lily was hanging onto the reins determined NOT to let her graze, and Annie pulled Lily right down Annie's neck. Kind of like a playground slide with a mane down the middle. Annie likes to eat.

At one Pony Club games day Annie decided that the plastic fruit in the barrel was real and needed inspection. Lily could not get Annie's head out of that bucket.

So, back to the horse trials. Lily couldn't sleep that night for worrying about Annie eating the hay jumps. I continued to tell her she was crazy.

Guess what. Lily was first after dressage, had a perfect round in cross country -- and then it happened. In show jumping the first jump was the one with the bale of hay. Annie went right up to it, slowed down but did not stop. Lily started kicking and using her crop, because we could all tell that Annie was planning on having lunch, right then and there in the show jumping arena. The hay was calling to her! And I watched in amazement as my little girl forced that fat, lazy, perfect pony to jump the jump -- but not before Annie took a bite out of it on the way over. I don't know if there is a penalty for eating the jump, but they weren't charged and managed to hang onto first place.

More on Annie later. When it was time to sell her, all it took was one e-mail to one person. Safe ponies, even overweight ones that will buck and kick, are hard to come by.

As for my red ribbon, well, I'm glad I lived to tell about it. Lucy and I were first after dressage. On cross country she bolted on a stretch of wooded path, took three strides and realized that she faced a tall, wire pasture fence. I thought we were dead. I really thought we were dead when I realized she believed her best option was to JUMP IT. That's why God gave horses manes, even if He shorted them on brains. So I hung on and we cleared it! Then I was able to get her to stop. My first reaction was to pray and thank God that we were alive. My second reaction was to figure out whether or not I was legally on or off course. Since I could follow the fence line down to where a gate opened out onto a path and there were no jumps that I was missing, I decided that I was still legal and rode on down to the gate and resumed cross country. I had that euphoric feeling you get when you almost die but don't. And Lucy seemed to have recovered what few senses she has.

And then I did that really stupid thing that riders sometimes do. Coming in to the last jump, which was not at all challenging, I ignored the little voice in my head that said, "Lucy is going to be distracted by that other horse that just came on course," and I kept riding toward the last jump as though I had already won. But that little voice was right. There was a horse coming in the opposite direction, and though he wasn't near the jump, that was all the excuse Lucy needed to duck out. All I had to do was actually ride and it would have been ours. So we dropped from first to second place and didn't screw up in show jumping, so we got to keep it.

But I lived and my daughter won, even with Annie taking a bite out of jump. That was a great day.