No Easy Way To Say - He’s Gone
Ξ July 6th, 2008 | → | ∇ Rainbow Bridge, Wap Rah Cheer |
Born March 30, 2004
Died June 23, 2008
Faroh was born on a Tuesday night, right in the middle of American Idol. From the first minute, he planned to be a star. His was a difficult foaling. His mother was a maiden, and he presented with a right elbow lock, so it was a struggle to get him delivered. He was, I thought, a solid - not a mark on his legs or his face - and I was beginning to be a little disappointed until the first of the white started arriving just behind his neck and continued until the last of his hocks. It was at that moment of wonder that his nickname, “The Spotted Wonder,” was given to him. I was a little disappointed upon discovering he was a colt and not a filly, but that was the last time he ever disappointed me.
He had a lonely babyhood, but he was an easy foal to raise. He was the only foal that year, so he grew up with nothing but mares. George Basehoar said later, “he thinks like a girl.” I suppose that was true. His entire life was surrounded by bossy women. However, he was very smart and eager to learn his foal lessons. Every time I asked him to do something, he worked hard to learn it JUST the way I wanted it done. Then he never varied the routine, and when I wanted to do it another way, he would explain to me that, “no, THIS is the way we do that.” He was always cheerful and always interested in being where the people were rather than what the other horses were doing. He was always the first horse to the gate, even when he was a baby, he’d leave his mother to come to the gate to see farm visitors. He seemed to know they were there to see him and that HE was the star of the farm.
His show debut was at Sooner’s June 2004 fall show. While we were standing in the warmup pen, someone commented on that loud colored colt out of that solid mare. He was supposed to show in Most Colorful, but he wasn’t weaned yet, and when he realized that he had to go into the area without his mother, he explained in no uncertain terms that he wasn’t ready to DO that just yet, so we scratched at the gate. But by the fall of 2004, he was ready to show. He earned his first blue ribbon in Hunter-In-Hand at the Sooner October show that year and picked up a couple of halter points as well in weanling colts. The membership of the Sooner Club adopted him as their own, and they became his biggest fans and most loyal supporters. I was always grateful for their love and support throughout his life - his wins, his losses, his illnesses, and his exhuberant displays of young stallion enthusiasm. Their grief matches my own.
As a yearling, Faroh and I campaigned across four states - Oklahoma, Missouri, Kansas, and Texas. He earned 5 National points, in spite of consistently being the youngest horse in his class and showing against aged veterans and national and world champion stallions. We frequently met Count Willie in the arena, and we even bested The Radio Flyer in one class - which I can tell you was a very proud moment. Faroh learned to ground drive and placed third in his first (and later to be his only) Oklahoma Driving Society show. I showed him four times at the Easy J Stables Sporthorse show. He won his class twice, and once was awarded the highest score of the day. The other two times he was placed second. His judging sheets are consistent with comments like, “lovely horse, lots of sparkle, lots of spring.”
Faroh’s first ApHC Nationals class was as a yearling stallion. He did well, until the final trot cone when the flash bulb popped and surprised him. He stalled, went up, and his perfect run ended with an 8th place finish. Still - a nationals ribbon and a first for me! Faroh ended his yearling year as the Sooner High-Point Halter Stallion, which I found kind of funny since I never thought of him as a halter horse.
I took him out twice as a two year old, - once in February to Waco where he spent the entire show screaming at every horse he saw, and again in March to Purcell where he spent the entire time trying to convince a beautiful black mare that he was “all that” in spite of her obvious disinterest in him. Faroh did not have a mean bone in his body, but he was extemely frustrated by the combined pressures of his own work ethic and the stall confinement necessary to keep a show horse training fit with a beautiful coat. Add a little testosterone poisoning, and he was miserable. I couldn’t get his attention, and when I did get it, I couldn’t keep it. He’d always been so cheerful and happy and so focused and willing to work, that it just wasn’t worth it to me to see him be so miserable and know that I was the cause of it.
He was becoming so objectionably obnoxious that I called my friend George Basehoar, who had owned Faroh’s sire, and asked if Faroh could come visit for the summer. George agreed, and so Faroh went to live with George and I went to summer camp. The summer separation was great for both of us. Faroh matured and got to interact with a human male for the first time in his life, and I got to decompress from the pressures of being responsible for his future. He came back happy to go back to work, and I came back with a strong belief that he needed to be allowed to be a HORSE first, and a show horse second and if we couldn’t manage both, he didn’t have to be a show horse. He could be my riding gelding - which would be more fun for him and me both.
But before giving up on his stallion career, I wanted to give him one more chance to show me that his summer off had given him a new perspective. It had. He returned to training with the cheerful focus that he’d always had as a yearling. My boy was back in the game. At the end of his two year old summer, Gia Dawn Madole started him under saddle. His canter was always his best gait, and he was so happy to offer it that Hunter In Hand was quite a challenge for him and me both - how to get that great big trot without breaking into his lovely, soft, fluid canter gear. His lead changes had always been soft and fluid, so fluid that you didn’t even see them happen unless you were watching closely.
Not surprisingly, Faroh showed a lot of promise as a Western Riding horse, and Gia and I began to make plans to show him in Western Riding as a three year old Junior horse. She put 90 days of under saddle on him and at the end of that fall, we turned him out to live with some old broodmares to teach him some real manners. His two year old stallion brain really needed that lesson, and it was probably the best one of his life. He never looked at mares quite the same way again.
I bred him to two mares as a three year old. I wanted him to show under saddle that summer, and wanted to have foals on the way so that I could tell people that he was fertile and could get mares settled. I expected there to be a lot of interest in him after his under saddle season. His breeding shed debut was quite funny. He’d spent an entire winter being hammered on by mares who were explaining his role in society to him, and he was NOT interested in approacing an unknown one without a LOT of convincing. Fortunately for us, he approached his job as a breeding stallion like every other job I’d ever asked him to do - with a willingness to try to do what I was asking and get it right the first time.
Faroh had a tremendous work ethic and wanted a job to do. He did not enjoy stall confinement and was always happier and more manageable when he could be turned out along with his show schedule. I tried hard to make that happen for him, by allowing him to continue to live with the broodmare band that he was living with during his under saddle schooling time. And then he started losing weight.
I’d already paid his nationals show entry for 2-3year old hunter stallions - so I took him, but he was too thin to be competitive. In spite of his perfect run, we placed fourth, but did come in ahead of a nice Hunter son. In August, he suffered an episode of choke, and I began to think that there was something more than “he’s too thin” going on.
I brought him home, and began to look for an answer to why he wasn’t “right.” I took him to Oklahoma State University and they ran what seemed to be hundereds of tests. Nothing matched the physical signs. There was no explanation for his weight loss. He had some abcesses in his lungs, but the vet thought it was probably due to the choke, gave me some antibiotics and sent me home to watch him some more.
Two days later he developed a nasty smelling nasal drainage and we went back to the vet. More tests - scopes, x-rays, scans, blood tests. I knew it was serious because I told my friend Erica (a fourth year vet student at OSU) that “I’ve quit seeing medical students, and I’m seeing nothing but doctors, and most of them are department chairs.” His proteins were elevated - and the word “cancer” was first mentioned. But the tests came back as “not cancer” but as “infection” so we went with another round of antibiotics - which cleared up the nasal drainage. The next visit his blood work was again out of whack — he had nothing but “new” blood cells, no old ones. I don’t know all the terms or all the words they used. All I know is that they’d come in and say, “based on these tests, he should look sicker” or ”the tests don’t match the physical signs that we’re seeing” and they’d send me home with another round of antibiotics and tell me that they’d see me again in two weeks. He’d come off the antibiotics, and the nasal drainage would return. The vets suspected an abcessed tooth, but the radiographs were clean, and nothing in his mouth indicated a problem with a tooth.
But he was gaining weight - in fact, in the last pictures I have of him loading on the trailer to go to New York, he’s almost chubby. He got brighter — the sparkle was back in his eye, he was cheerful and full of life again. He was running and bucking all over the pasture, showing off for the mares that he could see but not quite reach. Finally we had a normal blood test, and he was cleared by the vet to go to New York, where he was to start over fences with Kris. I cleaned out the rest of my bank account to get him there.
He left the day before Thanksgiving and arrived in good shape. Kris called and said, “He’s CUTE.” Of course, “Kris says that about all of them.” He and Kris began to work together. She liked him, and he obviously adored her. He had another stallion - Innochi - to play with. A month after he got there, the nasal discharge was back, another culture, and more antibiotics.
When he went down in the pasture in June with a suspected torsion colic, I told Kris to let him go. It was a hard decision, and at the time I hoped it was the right one. She called me the next day with the field necropsy results. His liver was yellow and covered with bumpy growths. He had internal adhesions everywhere - his intestinal tract, his body cavity. He was obviously sicker than any of us ever knew. His tremendous heart and great work ethic kept him going in spite of what his body was doing to him.
Faroh left this world as he came into it - in the arms of someone who loved him and was filled with wonder at the miracle of his existance. In fact, it’s a wonder he was ever here at all.
God speed, Faroh. See if Creator will save a ride for me when I get there. I miss you, buddy.
Pat