Life of Sid

I decided I should go into a little deeper detail about my heart horse Sidney aka Sid. She was my first ever horse which made her extremely special. She's not the first horse I had the pleasure of working with however she was one I could call my own. Here's her back story. Sid was born on a nowhere farm from a Morgan stallion to a Paint mare. I do not know their names but I wish I did. By the age of 2 she had been sold to a man who had plans to "break" her. Now most horse people you speak with they shudder at the true term of breaking. To break a horse is to break its soul.

He didn't succeed and Sid (even after the years of myself and her previous owner Gary owning her you could still see the scars from the harsh spurs he used) don't get me wrong, I occasionally used spurs on Sid too. However, I always used either ball spurs or bumper spurs. Both were blunt and when used properly caused no pain to the horse. Back to our story. He couldn't break her as she was just too high spirited. So he put her in with his Tennessee Walking Horse stallion Sonic Boom aka Boomer. Now mind you Sid was only between two and three when he did this. She gave birth to a gorgeous filly who was nearly an exact copy of herself.

The breeding calmed her down enough for her owner at that time to finish the breaking process. He then sold her to Gary. Gary didn't have much of a use for Sid as he preferred splashed paints to the solid coloring. He didn't ride his own two, Jasper and Luna, let alone have a use for Sid on top of it. After several years of letting her sit in the pasture and enjoy life, I came into the picture. I went to school with Gary's daughter and on occasion came over and played dolls or whatever. Being raised a horse girl, that's all I wanted to do honestly was ride or just enjoy being around the horses.

Gary agreed to keep Sid at his house until I could put secure fencing up at my parent's house to keep Sid in. The deal was though I had to come over every day after school and work with her and feed all three horses along with bale hay in the summer months. For a horse girl that was no big deal. Me and Sid worked day in and day out together. As I said in my first story she was with me through a lot of hard times growing up. She tolerated the teenage drama that came with my first boyfriend, the silliness of a horse crazy girl in general, and the miles and miles of trails and roads we road and walked together.

That just about brings our past to the present. After I got married I moved to Gaylord, a few months later I moved Sid and my husband's horse Nyx to the house as well, Nyx passed away from old age a few months later (long story short I traded Sid's daughter that I had bred for Nyx. Bad Idea.) and I moved Sid back to Spruce as I was moving from Gaylord. On May 3rd I got a message saying Sid wasn't acting right and that I needed to come over right away. I scraped together the money (I was in a pretty hard spot at that point) and me and my husband, Ken, went over there. Other than being slight laggy I didn't notice anything unusual. I gave her a bath as she had manure caked on to her and that's when I was told she had had a massive cut on her shoulder, and I found a cut just between where her ankle and hoof connect.

She had not been given antibiotics for her shoulder wound I later found out, I gave her an apple and lots of pettings. told her I was pregnant and how much fun we'd all have together. Part of me told me something was wrong, but I figured it was just me being hormonal. A week later I got a call from my mom at 7 am. She asked if I had read Matt's message yet. I told her no I was sleeping and asked her what was wrong cause I could hear she had been crying. She told me Sid was dead. Matt had gone out to take care of all the horses and had found her. I once again scraped together the money and we drove as fast as possible to where she was. I said my final goodbyes. We did take blood samples as well as a mucus sample and learned she had died from a massive infection. She had went sceptic. I still blame myself but the wildlife biologist that tested her blood has reassured me several times even if I had administered penicillin it wouldn't have helped. There is so much that I wish I could change, I beat myself up every day. Reality is though you just never know what's going to happen.