My Friend Jesse

The house is quiet; the oldest three children have left to spend the weekend with their dad! That in it self is good, they haven't spent much time with their dad for almost a year. I figured I would take advantage of the quietness and try to get a bunch of writing done. Which brings me to my subject of interest at this moment in time. Jesse!

Jesse was the last big birthday present my mom bought me before she passed away, that I still have to this day. Jesse also happens to be my best friend and has been with me for 20 years. She is as beautiful as all the colors of the rainbow. She's soft and fluffy in the winter time, always warm on the coldest of cold days, has a deep voice that makes me laugh because she sounds like a guy, knows when I need to talk to her, never gives me any flack about what my most current gripe is, let's me cry in her beautiful mane of hair, has soft and kind eye's, has seen me through my most trying and darkest hours (my mom dying, drug abuse, abusive relationship, divorce, depression, losing loved ones, etc.) when I couldn't find a way out, to my most joyous and loving times (my kids being born, teaching them all how to ride, graduating high school, finding Chris, etc.) In case you haven't figured it out Jesse is a horse!

Jesse came to me through J's mom. J is responsible for my addiction to horses and when I outgrew my pony her mom was sent on a mission to find me a horse that would at least last through my teen years that I wouldn't outgrow. I don't think my mom would believe I still have her to this day almost 20 years later! Jesse was a reject, no really she was, see she is an ex-racehorse and like many ex-racehorses she would more then likely have ended up at some slaughter plant had J's mom not bought her. Jesse hated the track, hated whips, hated men (still sort of does today too, smart girl). Since she was naughty on the track they were getting rid of her. She was a five year old not broke to saddle but was broke to cart. There are two types of Standardbreds; there are trotters and pacers. Jesse is a pacer, which means when she moves faster then a walk the front, and back legs on one side move together. I'd never ridden a pacer before so it took sometime to get used to her movement.

Jesse came home in April and I remember that day as if it were yesterday. J's mom told me she had never been ridden before but that she didn't think it would take much to train her and it really didn't take much time at all. The day was cold and it was raining slightly, I climbed on Jesse bareback and J ponied us home. I was so excited to actually have a horse now, and that I got to stay home from school to bring her home. The ride home other then being cold was uneventful, nothing bothered her.

Once home though it was a different story. My dad an old time farmer that still to this day believes barbed wire is best, had fenced in the whole field. Not realizing that racehorses don't usually get to go out to pasture, he didn't think much of it. Racehorses usually only go out of the stall to train or race that's it. So when Jesse was let loose she immediately ran into the barbed wire fence and got hurt pretty bad. After lots of penicillin shots and cleanings she was OK. She got used to the fencing and was allowed out. Training was easy; because she was familiar with the weight of the cart it didn't bother her to take the weight of the saddle and myself.

We almost lost Jesse a few years later. My mom had bought herself a horse, back before vet checks were a big deal and when taking someone's word was still good enough. When Dusty came to us we had no clue that he was in the early stages of a near deadly disease known as "STRANGLES". Though strangles doesn't normally kill a horse it can if not treated properly. It is also highly contagious and even though Dusty had only been with Jesse for about a week the damage had already been done. The vet came out and showed us how to properly care for the draining lymph nodes in both horses and to give shots three times a day, rotating injection sites so as not to make them sore. J would come out in the middle of night after work to help me give shots. It was a long process and we almost lost both horses. Strangles usually affects your young horses or elderly ones in which case we had one of both. Don't get me wrong it can happen to any horse at any time but it's usually the ones with little immune system or compromised immune systems. By the end fourth night of shots I completely lost it, I was just a kid and here I was on the verge of possibly loosing my friend to something that is easily prevented, but she fought through it with me and over came it!

When I was 15 my mom and I were in a tragic car accident in which I ended up in ICU and my mom was gone. I had a long recovery ahead of me so I let Jesse go out for lease so she could still be used. At that time I had seriously thought about selling her because the doctors didn't think I would be able to ride again. I finally decided that even if I couldn't ride again, I simply couldn't sell my birthday gift from my mom and brought her home.

Throughout the summer of 1993, I was addicted to different drugs; my drug of choice in the end was cocaine. When I met Stephen I fell in love, even though he was ten years older then me. He got me off the drugs, and we moved when I bought my own property when I was 16. Jesse moved with me to the new house, the first few nights here were interesting, one morning I woke up and Jesse was gone, I couldn't for the life of me figure out how she got out since the fence was still intact. It had snowed lightly so there was a covering on the driveway and road so I followed her hoof prints all the way to the house she knew was home. She had walked the 2-½ miles home on the proper side of the road and even walked across the crosswalk on the big bridge in town. I found her standing in her old stall, she missed home!

Jesse was with me through all the kids being born, and taught them all how to ride. Josette immediately fell in love with horses from the time she could walk, Jake liked them too, Tate on the other hand loved them from a distance, and it was OK if she walked up to them but if they looked at her you would think the whole world was falling apart. It wasn't until the end of last year that Tate started to come around and like them, in fact you can see a picture of Tate in my profile riding my beloved stallion Bold. She has come a long ways from not liking them so much to being able to ride on her own and a horse that's 20 times her size.

Over the years I had tried to breed Jesse and she just never took. Then in the spring of 04 I got looking at her and thought, holy cow you look awesome for your age. As I stood there watching her, I saw these little movements and thought what the heck? I sort of put it in the back of my mind she was 21 years old I had given up long ago trying to breed her and the fact she hadn't been in with Bold or Danny. When spring shots came the vet asked me when Jesse was due and I looked at him puzzled and said " don't you mean when is Tia due?" He shook his head and said, "we know when she's due but the question is when is Jesse due?" It was then that I remembered that in the late summer after a horse show we had brought Jesse home instead of taking her to the pasture. I had been at work and apparently Danny my Appaloosa stallion had gotten loose and my neighbors put him in the nearest paddock that was Jesse's. When I got home I didn't think much of it because she was on one side and he was on the other and the fact she was 20 years old and a maiden mare! Apparently Jesse's problem was she prefers the younger men to the more experienced one's and so the waiting game was on. I was hoping for an Independence Day foal but Indy entered the world at 12:05 a.m. July 5^th! A dashing bay with some slight, unique facial markings not really a snip or blaze or star and two white socks like Dad! I finally had my foal I had waited ten years for! Jesse was an excellent mother, we were worried that she might reject him because of her age and this being her first foal and the fact that she absolutely hated her udder being touched, but we didn't interfere because I've found Mother Nature usually always works out right in the end and now Indy is still as dashing as the day he was born and is a beautiful coming four year old!

Jesse saw me through my divorce as well. I was married for eight years and it was an endless battle with the abuse. I couldn't take it anymore. I was to the point where I stopped believing in myself and didn't want to be around anyone or anything. Then I had the epiphany I had been waiting for. It was as if I was in this thick fog not being able to see anything, and I walked right into a brick wall and woke up. I took Jesse out on one of my favorite trail rides with beautiful views and I thought what the hell am I doing, I'm ruining my life and my children's by trying to make a marriage work that was clearly doomed from the get go and I didn't have any right to ruin my children's lives! I filed for divorce and honestly it was the best thing I could have done from my children and myself.

Jesse will be 25 this year she deserves to live out the rest of her days here at the farm peacefully. I keep thinking that the time will come soon that I will have to make that decision to help her move onto greener pastures, and I think it will be one of the hardest things I will have to do in this life. I do know that when the time comes she'll let me know. Hopefully it won't be for sometime yet, and hopefully I'll be able to look in her eye's and tell her how she saved me through the bad times and shared with me the good times and just how much I love her and how much I'll miss my childhood friend!