This could get long!
My grandad bought Image at the NFC dispersal sale, along with 4 other young stallions. They were all promptly gelded at our house! Grandad started him in harness, thinking to get him driving and offer him at our open house and sale we were planning. The first time he hooked him to the cart and drove him out of the arena, we all said, put him away, he's not for sale, there was already evidence he would be a great driving horse. The year after that I started showing him. I started back at the beginning with his driving training, and with Grandad's help went through all the steps with him. Good for both of us as it was the first time I'd started with that green a horse and Image has never been accused of being the brightest bulb. It took literally months for him to figure out that he was supposed to jump both ends over the jump, he would jump with his front end, and then walk through the jump with his hind legs.
Just a couple weeks before his first show we had a minor wreck. I think he was stung by a bee, he leaped sideways, putting one wheel of the cart over a bush and tipping it over. He didn't seem very perturbed by it, but I was worried about him and took it very easy after that. Our first show was in 1996, I was 16 and it was a learning experience for me. For the first time, every ribbon (or lack of ribbon) was a reflection on what I'd taught him, when we levelled our first obstacle driving course, I was upset, not because he had misbehaved, but because I hadn't prepared him well enough. At that show he also won his first (and only!) halter trophy for Reserve Senior Gelding (I still have it on my desk!) and, for the first time, I asked him to GO! We were in the barrel race, I stopped worrying about him so much, and I distinctly remember the moment I thought "well, this is a safe, enclosed environment, there's no one else in the ring, lets see what he can do!" and on the homestretch I sent him on .... he was, without a doubt, the fastest, smoothest horse I'd ever driven!
That fall, my brother's horse, who we'd both been planning on showing at the AMHA Nationals, came up lame, so Image went. He wasn't ready, and the only top ten he won was in 7 and under showmanship with my youngest brother (and that only because there was 10 in the class - after showing and standing still in huge showmanship classes with me in 13-17, and John in 8-12, by the time he got to poor little Mike, he was NOT a happy camper!). However, he held his own in his roadster classes, and I remember a trainer, after watching Youth Roadster, telling me "you were robbed", that I should've placed. Which was fun!
Image loved to go fast, roadster was his class, as well as barrels and stakes. He once hit 2 cones in the stake race, and with 10 seconds in penalties, still won ... soon though, everyone was practicing their barrels and stakes, trying to beat him, which made for a lot of fun competition in our club!
In 1998, my last year as a youth, I flew down to Reno for the AMHA Nationals ... the highlight was when we placed third in Youth Roadster, which was both super exciting and kinda disappointing, as he didn't win a trophy, but had done so well! However, since I had to leave and go back to college before the Grand & Reserve Roadster class, it was probably just as well! The best part was when one of the judges came up to me in the bathroom soon after the class to tell me she'd placed him first.
When the Calgary Stampede started awarding the Canadian National Champions, I was very excited when he won Reserve Champion Single Pleasure Driving, and earned his very first neck ribbon!! And even more excited when he won Canadian National Roadster Horse, a title he would hold for the next 5 years.
At one show I remember, he was Grand Champion Single Pleasure under both judges, Grand Champion Roadster under both judges, and got a Grand and a Reserve in Country (back when cross entries were allowed).
One year we had brought him in to Aggie Days on a cold March Wednesday, to do a driving demo for the kids. Saturday when we brought him back to drive again, he was lame on his left hind. The vet and physiotherapist figured he'd slipped on the ice and hurt his SI joint. After a couple months of rest and treatments I was soon driving him again, but it was a problem that often recurred and needed attention.
Another time I'd just finished driving him when we noticed his eyes were reflecting orange ... the vet said we better bring him in (they don't mess around with eyes!) and by the time we got there he was obviously unable to see. The vet said his eyes were full of broken down amino acids, and that his pupils were snapped shut. The priority was to get his pupils open, because otherwise they can stick shut. So home we went, putting Atropine to dilate his pupils and antibiotics in his eyes every 2 hours. I was so relieved when his pupils opened by about 10 o'clock that night, and the next morning when he was his usual, rambunctious self, asking for his breakfast with his head over the stall gate, I figured we were out of the woods. But when I turned him into the round pen (he had to stay out of the sun) while I cleaned his stall, he promptly walked into the fence. Luckily, during my immediate frantic call to the vet, they said it was probably the protiens blocking his vision, and that we would have to wait for it to clear. He was blind for the better part of a week, and then still had to stay out of the sun because of the meds. We bought him a fly mask, and the first time I was able to drive him was just amazing ... I had been doubting for a couple weeks that I'd ever be able to drive him again, and then there we were, flying though the hay field, with him throwing in a couple little happy bucks, and me with just the biggest grin on my face. Since we'd by then come right up to our first show of the year, which that year was the Canadian Nationals, I wasn't hoping for much with almost no conditioning, and was just so happy to be showing him. We pulled his fly mask off at the gate (we were lining up outside, showing inside), and the two of us may not have been the best in the ring, but we were definitely the happiest! That first class, where I think we placed 4 and 5, is quite possibly my favorite show memory ever, just being so grateful to be in the showring with my horse who was loving it as much as I was. When we squeaked into the Roadster championship class on a second, I realized that we weren't out of it and really drove, and Image once again ended up Canadian National Roadster Horse. Icing on the cake!!
Along the way Image won his Superior Event Horse in Open Roadster, and an Honor Roll buckle in AOTE Roadster, as well as some National Top Ten's through the years.
We battled his lameness for years, keeping him sound enough to show, but the hauling became pretty hard on him ... he'd be sound at home and then not by the time we got to the show, and it broke my heart when I had to scratch him, though often he was just lame enough that I knew, and so long as I drove him at 80% he wasn't sore. I remember coming out of the showring with 2 Grand Champion ribbons, trying not to cry because I knew we were coming to the end.
I agonized over showing him his last year .... we were just taking him to the Stampede, our closest show so that the trailer ride wasn't bad, but I was afraid that I was doing it for me, and I didn't want to hurt him just because I couldn't handle leaving him home, or worse yet, because I wanted to win. Finally, I enlisted the help of Bonnie Fogg. She told me lots of interesting things ... that the reason he doesn't get along with other horses is because he thinks he's better than them, that he wanted to know "where the music went" (we stopped putting him in Liberty, which he loved, when he started having soundness issues), that he's a clown and that he's a hero - if he knows what you want him to do, he'll do it to best of his ability. I already knew that.
But she also said that he wanted to tell me that I better stop "giggling with my friends" at the shows and take it seriously, or we "wouldn't win". I took him to that last show, and we needed it, I think, for both of us to realize that he couldn't do it anymore. Oh he placed okay, seconds and thirds, but it was obviously the end of an era.
It was hard to make the decision to retire him, but it was harder when the next summer, when we were going to shows without him, and he wouldn't let me catch him for months. Everyone told me he was just enjoying his retirement and didn't want to have to work, but I know that he was mad at me for going to the shows without him. Finally, that fall, I brought him in to teach my 4H kids to ground drive. He took it very seriously. He'd always been good at adjusting for the skill level of his driver, going carefully and slowly with a beginner, and fast, strong and opinionated when I drove him. After he started working with the kids, I think he felt he had a job again, and that helped his transition to retiree a lot.
Image's last show was in 2005. This summer I realized how much I still miss him at the shows, there was a driving horse there that reminded me so much of Image, there I was crying my eyes out while unhooking my current driving horse - who is a pretty great horse in his own right! I went home with this idea that I'd bring Image to a show, why not? I'd been driving him every month or so since he retired from showing, and he was okay for a while at home, be worth a try. But when I went to drive him, he'd deteriorated a lot. He was lame, but that's not the worst part. My impatient, energetic, enthusiastic brat of a horse, never pawed while I was harnessing, stood still and never tried to bite me while I hooked him, was happy to walk, and never once tried to take over and tell me where we were going. I drove him a few times, put him on some more joint supplements, and finally accepted it .... he is not longer a driving horse, and if he's okay with that, I guess I'll have to learn to live with it as well.
NFC Illusions Image
(hehehe, look how young and skinny we both are!
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OH!
