Bear's Rescue

Story of Life after Rescue

		How apt his name is. Like a bear he is brown (bay), soft and furry. He has brown eyes and sometimes comes across a bit grizzly. However, unlike a wild bear he has an unmistakably soft, gentle side that is reflected in his lovely big, soft brown eyes. His nicker is soft, gentle and kind and he is the most willing horse I have ever known. When we took Bear home to our paddock he lived on the other side of the fence from my horse and his friend for some time.
This photo of Bear and Nicky was the inspiration behind our new logo design. This photo taken by a local newspaper generated a great deal of response. It depicts the emotion in both horse and human.

However, this did not decrease the hard time he was going to have for the next three months until he established his place in the herd. It is natural for a new horse to be hassled a bit by the dominant one in the paddock but neither Hannah (who is Bears owner) nor I (Hannah’s Mum) were prepared to watch how much of a hard time he was going to have. He had hunks out of him for months and he would run down to the corner of the paddock and Hannah would have to goand bring him back.

Hannah was his only friend and he bonded with her very quickly. I suppose he needed someone on his side. It took 3 months for him to be accepted and to settle in. The day I saw him lying down in the paddock while the other two were standing up, I realised that he felt safe and I stopped worrying so much about him. It was the most heart breaking time I have ever been through as there was not much I could do except let nature take its course. Although, I did get some herbal treatment for my horse who was being very dominant and it did calm him down a little. Bear suffered from stress and had learnt some bad habits from his need to protect himself from my horse. So now we were confronted with a horse that had separation anxiety and severe stress when he was on his own or when put into unfamiliar situations. He had become snappy and when stressed had no idea where anyone was on the ground. You had to be very watchful or he would just run over you. I was starting to wonder whether I had done the right thing by Bear and Hannah.

Even though we were experiencing these difficulties, we could understand where Bear was coming from. We did not have full knowledge of Bear’s background, but apparently when he was surrendered to PHHWV he was nearly at dropping point. When he was un-rugged it was noticeable that his wither was covered in festering sores and as the rug was removed all the scabs came off. Although when we took Bear home he was not snappy, we thought that being put into the situation with another dominant horse may have bought back behaviour he had needed to use when he was starving. It is easy to picture in your mind a hungry horse trying to scavenge food from wherever he could, fighting for every mouthful he got, eating the scraps from the ground and chewing on wood just to fulfil his need to chew when there was nothing else. He was probably kicked and bitten and bullied and I am sure he was very, very stressed. Horses do not understand why people don’t feed them!

So we took it very gently with Bear. We tried to never put him in a situation where he would be stressed - such as tying him up, never leaving him in a paddock on his own, always hacking out with another horse or two.
After a while he started to settle down and became more responsive. Hannah and Bear had lessons every week and they went off to Pony Club together. When he first started at Pony Club Hannah took him over some very small show jumps and he ran through the lot knocking them all over, not even realising they were there!

Now he can jump 70 cm happily and has even jumped 84 cm! However, he is staying at E Grade jumping until he and Hannah feel confident doing that level (which is 76 cm at its highest) and then their instructor will slowly move them up a bit higher.

I can understand how someone could be intimidated by Bear – if he was hungry and cold (he needs a winter rug plus a doona rug too on really cold nights). He is a big horse – 16.2 hands, and could be a bit scary if you could not see through his tough exterior. We have had Bear for just less than 2 years now and he has come such a long way. He was very lucky to have been surrendered to Project Hope – otherwise I think he would have died, and that would have been a waste of such a wonderful, majestic thoroughbred. He has won a Pony Awards Competition in Horsepower Magazine and was nominated a “Super Pony” and had a lovely picture printed too. He has been in Victoria Ferguson’s (Herbalist in NSW) Newsletter and has been in the Project Hope Newsletter a couple of times. Hannah has written some lovely poems and stories about him.

Bear has one funny trait that sends Hannah, I and anyone else who sees it, into hysterics. He has a very long tongue and after he has had a drink of water, he lets his tongue hang out of his mouth. It hangs a good 3 cm out of his mouth until he decides to very quickly suck it back in! One day we gave him a drink of molasses water because we wanted to make sure he was hydrated enough as it was very hot. He drank some and then just sloshed his tongue around in the bucket and splashed us all. It really was funny to watch.

Now that there are only two horses in our paddock and not three (the old boy died April this year – 33 years old) he shares with my horse and it is very nice to watch. It makes us feel that they are happy, accepting being close to one another. But I really think my horse Ripley is just keeping an eye on his friend.

Hannah never pushes Bear to do too much or jump too high. He is so willing that he would try anything for her. Even when his stifle was slipping out he was quite willing to keep working even though it would have been uncomfortable for him. Hannah will take him as far as the two of them can go together – it never will be the case of how far Hannah can go – unless she can go that far with Bear. She loves to groom him, talk to him and quite often just sits with him when he is eating and strangely enough he does not mind her doing that.

We feed him lots. His diet was formulated by Victoria Ferguson, who wrote the book “The Practical Horse Herbal”. He has 5 kg of chaff a day, up to 2 kg of cooked barley (depending on the season – less in spring and summer), linseed and millet porridge, molasses, apple cider vinegar, slippery elm bark powder for his suspected ulcers and loose manure, and a bag of selected herbs prescribed by Victoria. He also shares at least a bale of hay a day when the grass is sparse and sometime two bales if need be.
Hannah recently did her C Certificate at Pony Club and she and Bear had to gallop up the hill. Boy, was he fast, Hannah said it was fantastic but wondered when she was going to be able to stop him! I think he enjoys going fast and he definitely enjoys doing cross country – they do lots of circles to help slow down a bit!

To sum it all up, I can only say that you only need to look into Bear’s beautiful big brown eyes to see what sort of a horse he really is. You know the old saying, “Don’t judge a book by its cover”? If we had then we may never have opened the book and a wonderful chapter of our lives with Bear would have been missed.

If ever you have a chance to care for a Project Hope horse, or any other rescued horse for that matter, don’t expect perfection. Take into account what they have been through and look into their soul. A horse will give you back triple fold what you give it!

Judy and Hannah Tricker