Horse Around Acres

The Story of Henry

Henry is our special horse (well, Mary Helen's).  Henry was once a school horse who had become sour from giving so many riding lessons and had been coming up lame pretty regularly.   He also had a pretty bad case of COPD.

The barn made a necessary (and difficult) business decision and took Henry to a local auction for sale.   Mary Helen had taken lessons on Henry (had since bought her own horses) and wanted to make sure Henry got a good home so she followed him to the auction.  Henry got sold 4 times that day and ended up in the hands of the dog food company.  Mary Helen couldn't stand to see someone having served so many for so long going in that way and offered the dog food company a considerable amount over their purchase price.   They accepted and Mary Helen brought Henry to Horse Around Acres.

After several years of clean air, Henry's COPD cleared up.  He was the "protector."  We had a horse here once who was a bully to new horses.  He would chase them for a long time before he felt confident that his position in the pecking order wasn't going to be threatened.  Henry, having aged several years (he was probably in his early 30's then) knew he couldn't chase and catch up, so he'd stand in the middle of the pasture and time the pursuit so that he could let the new horse pass while cutting off the bully.

Henry died here in August of 2001 at the ripe old age of 36.  Early one morning he went out to the pasture and just laid down in the sun.  Other horses who were particularly close to Henry called for him.  We let them go see Henry.  Animals are different than us.  Once they saw that he had passed, they just accepted it.  Henry is buried here on the farm, in the pasture he loved.

Henry is truly a hero.  My next horse was a bay, thanks to Henry.