Years ago, at age nine, Gwen and her sister Alice lived with their mother on their grandparents’ farm. It was a lovely life for the two girls, and Grandpa and Grandma doted on them. Gwen was in Girls Scouts, thus participated in the annual cookie sale to raise money for their outside activities.
Grandpa took Gwen around the neighborhood to help her sell her cookies. One day they walked down a long gravel driveway to a house in the country. There was a grass pasture fenced off alongside the driveway. That day, a gray Arabian stallion enjoyed turnout time in the pasture. The horse spotted Grandpa and Gwen and danced along the fence following Gwen and nickering to her. Gwen was captivated by his beauty. “I was blown away by that horse and loved him the moment I saw him,” she told me. “I wanted that horse!”
The owner of the property bought cookies from Gwen. Then he and Grandpa, both being old cowboys, sat down on the front porch to catch up. Gwen announced that she wanted that stallion. The men laughed and told Gwen that stallion was far too much horse for such a little girl. The neighbor told Gwen she was welcome to check things out in his barn, so she darted off to explore. She spent an hour or more going through all the neat stuff in the barn and petting all the horses.
When Gwen got back to the porch after exploring on her own, the stallion’s owner offered her one of his other horses, Shammy, on a permanent loan basis in exchange for paying for her care. Gwen went home with her head spinning. She was in horse heaven!
Grandpa, Gwen, and Alice walked to the stallion’s farm a couple of days later. Granpa buckled a halter on Shammy and hoised both girls on Shammy’s back and walked the horse home. Shammy was half Welsh Mountain Pony and Half Arabian and became Gwen’s best friend right then and there. Gwen spent that summer riding, falling off and getting back on, sleeping in the barn, reading books while she sat on Shammy’s back, jumping, trail riding, and standing on Shammy’s back so she could pick apples off the apple trees she couldn’t reach from the ground. “I fed Shammy so many apples, she must have had the runs for days,” Gwen laughed. Shammy and Gwen were buddies and did everything together.
As time wore on, Shammy began to look bigger and bigger. Gwen thought, at ten years of age, that she knew everything and told her Grandpa Shammy was going to have a baby. Grandpa told Gwen the horse was just fat, and she needed to work some of that off the horse by running it off her. Gwen thought she knew more than Grandpa so she took it easy on Shammy, as easy as two horse crazy, goofy little girls could. Shammy, for her part, had lots of energy and enjoyed the girls every day.
The following spring, on a visit to trim Shammy’s feet, the farrier mentioned she looked like she could deliver a baby that night. Grandpa checked. Shammy had a milk bag filled and ready. Gwen laughed and laughed. “I was excited to get confirmation after all that time. We were going to have a baby horse to raise! It turned out that beautiful gray stallion I saw walking along the fenceline the day I sold cookies to his owner had gotten out and bred Shammy and another neighbor’s mare without the owner’s knowledge,” Gwen told me. “Two of his babies were born that spring and one of them was mine!”
Dream was born on April first that year. What a beautiful baby he was! They registered him as a Half Arabian, but he looked like a copy of his father. Shammy became Alice’s horse, and Gwen took Dream. For the next five years, Gwen and Alice had their “heart horses” and plenty of space to ride and grow up with them.
Gwen’s mom remarried when Gwen was 15-years-old. They moved away from the farm, and the only solution for the horses was to give Shammy back to the stallion owner and sell Dream to someone else. Both Gwen and Alice swore they would never forgive their mother for taking the horses away from them. Time has a way of healing old wounds. Eventually, they finished high school and became adults and forgave their mother.
Later in her adult life, Gwen tried to find Dream again. At that time, the resources were few, and on-line searches were not available yet. Gwen was desperate to find Dream, so she read local newspapers, visited feed stores to see the reader’s boards. She finally found him on the ArabDataSource. Dream passed away at the age of 33. She was too late to see him again. She cried for three days over the news. Today, she feels if he lived that long, someone else must have loved him dearly.
Gwen has another Arabian in her life these days. Alia is a beautiful gray Arabian. She shows her now that her children are grown. Gwen told me, “Lots of folks only get one “Heart Horse” in a lifetime. I am lucky, and I got two.”
