Horses are animals that understand humans. They have a feeling where they feel what you feel. If you’re sad, they comfort you. When you’re happy, they are excited. When you’re mad, they understand and will be there for you as almost a therapist. I experienced this full fledge and this horse, Hot Shot Brown, changed my life.


Hot Shot Brown, my horse that I owned from December 15, 2009 till’ July 31, 2010, made me stronger. When I first met Hot Shot, he was angry and malicious. I wanted to get a horse and her name was Rose. When I asked for Rose, they told me she was a lot of work and to try Hot Shot. I wasn’t to sure, but because I wanted a horse, I said sure. Two days later, Hot Shot was mine. Everyone was wary and told me I was crazy and I wanted to prove them wrong.


The first couple of days I was afraid of him and when I took him out to brush him, he lunged at me and tried to bite me and when I would be brushing him, he would try and kick me. I noticed that he looked under weight but when I asked the barn owner, she said he wasn’t. I still had a gut feeling and I called my old barn, Jodi, and she said I could move him there the next week. Amy, the owner of the barn where I was, was beyond pissed.


When I moved barns, the vet and farrier came out and checked him over. Hot Shot was 375 pounds under weight. He has stomach ulcers and was anemic from not being provided enough to eat, and dehydrated. His feet were in awful shape and they were hurting him. Hundreds of dollars later, with medication, vitamins, grains, and shoes, he was starting to get better.


While he was getting into shape, I was trying to bond with him. I went to see him every night after work, and would brush him or take him for a walk around the neighborhood with a lead rope. I remember he was so difficult and he wouldn’t stop.


One day, I came to the barn after getting into a fight with my step dad, who I worked for the whole time of having Hot Shot, and I was crying and was as mad as could be. I don’t know what came over me, but I went into the stall with him. I totally forgot for a minute why I was afraid of him. I just stood there and gave him a big hug. After that day, it felt like we were getting somewhere. He never tried to bite me or kick me after that point. Yes, he had his moments and got mad and would stomp or pretend to bite me but he never did.


I trusted him. I knew that he wouldn’t do anything to intentionally hurt me, but no one else believed me. I started riding him after two months of him recuperating. So in the end of February, early March, I started to really work with him. He was a challenge, but he was a challenge that I would be willing to work with, because he was willing to put up with me.


Hot Shot was a five year old, off the track, insane Thoroughbred. I loved that he was so powerful but sometimes, that was a bad thing.


We worked together for another month, and I then decided that we should go on a trail ride, I thought he was ready, and he was. Our first trail ride was pretty good considering he was in an environment that he was never in before. He was jittery and didn’t want to stay still. We went out with Lisa and Archie. Hot Shot jumped over sticks, thinking that they were bigger than they were and he likes to take off, but nothing that wasn’t controllable. I waited a few days to go back on the trail, and I worked with him on the ring.


In the very beginning of April, Jenny asked me if I wanted to come on a trail ride with her and noble, another horse at the barn. I thought this would be a great opportunity and accepted the offer, little did I know that I was going to have a rough time. We left the barn and made it to the trail without much trouble. It’s after we crossed the street over to near the State Police Station in the Blue Hills. There was a strip of gravel and, Hot Shot was a race horse and it was similar to what he was used to. He started to get antsy, but I felt confident. After we left that strip and entered the trail part behind the pond, Jenny asked if I wanted to let him go, and I said sure. Hot Shot took off and I felt him underneath me take off. I can’t explain the feeling but I know it was the scariest thing that I’ve ever felt I my life. Once I regained control, we had already almost run over a little girl and he almost ran us both into a tree.


Jenny asked me if I wanted to head back, but I knew that I would be giving into him if we turned back but also that I would be ruining the trail if we headed home, so we kept going. Hot Shot was being really good. We came to a field and I was scared out of my mind, but I wanted to let him get some energy so I let him canter around the field. The canter led to galloping but he didn’t have that uncontrollable feeling that he had before.


After five minutes or so of letting Hot Shot run, we headed back to the barn. We hit the gravel part of the road and Jenny asked if she could canter, and without waiting for my answer, she took off.


Hot Shots racetrack side came out. I turned him in circles and tried to run him into a tree, but this didn’t work. I don’t know when but he found an opportunity to bolt. He ran after Noble and Jenny. I remember screaming Jenny at the top of my lungs. I remember looking for a place to jump off but I can’t remember if I fell off or if I jumped.


I was on the ground and I don’t remember how long I was there but I do remember a man on a motorcycle coming over and telling me that he called 911, and a couple pulled over and offered me a bottle of water and asked if I was okay. I know I tried to stand up and I was frantic to find my horse.


I was right across from the Milton State Police so they were there with me in a matter of minutes. Sometime between all of this, Jenny came back. She told me she jumped off of Noble and the horses took off, but that she called Katie and Murph, which are people from the barn, and they are going to look for the horses.


I remember the police arriving first asking if I was okay, then the fire department who put me on a board incase I had a neck injury, and then finally the ambulance. Once they got me on the stretcher, they asked for my mothers number, so they could contact her and tell her what was going on, but also to get consent for treatment at the hospital.


When they called my mother, she was down the cape at my brother’s hockey game, over an hour away, plus it was a Sunday, so there was traffic.


I remember wanting to text her to tell her I’m okay and to text Murph to see if the horses were found and if they were okay, but I had put my phone in the pocket on the saddle pad, and Hot Shot had taken off with it.


Everything from the ambulance to the hospital was a blur. I know my grandmother met me at the hospital, Jenny was there with me, and I know I was anxious about the horses.


When Katie and Murph found the horses, they called Jenny and she told me. I was relieved but I was still worried that he was hurt.


It took three hours until they discharged me from the hospital with lacerations and cuts. At this point, my mom was at the hospital and as we got into the car, I had her drive me to Tedeschi’s and get Ginger Ale and Mentos. As we were leaving the store, I asked her to drive me to the barn. My mother violently disagreed, but in the end, she drove me.


When we arrived at the barn, I jumped out of the car and ran right towards Hot Shot’s stall. I opened the latch and went right in. I gave him the biggest hug and grabbed a towel and started wiping the blood off of him. Since he was a race horse, some horses get nose bleeds if they run too much, and he had dried blood all over his nose. He had cuts all on his right side and on his legs, and he lost a shoe, but besides that, he was just going to be a little sore in the morning.


As I was cleaning out the cuts and cleaning his nose, I started to cry. I cried because this whole accident was my fault. If I didn’t take him out in the first place and listened to everyone that was saying he wasn’t ready. If I turned around when he took off the first time and we went home. If I went to my brother’s hockey game instead of riding. I was blaming this whole thing on myself, and I still believe it was not Hot Shot’s fault at all. He was a baby and just off the track. He didn’t know any better.


After that fall, I didn’t get right back on. I still haven’t barley ride and it’s Mach, almost a year later. I did though do a lot of ring work and we bonded that way. It took me at least a month to get back up on Hot Shot and when I did, I had panic attacks and I couldn’t breathe.


Everyone at the barn was there for me and wanted to see me get back on horses, whether it was Hot Shot or another horse. Jodi brought me out to the ring to do one on one lessons, Katie said I could ride QT in the ring whenever, Patti always had an eye on me between facebooking me, texting, asking me to ride with her. Patti shared with me a story similar to my fall and she knew what I was going through. MT sat down with me a couple times and we talked. Lisa always kept the positive energy going. And Janine, she offered me to ride her horse, knowing how shaken my confidence was.


Everyone had faith in me so I decided to push myself and to push Hot Shot. I trusted him and I thought it was time to prove that I had faith in him. There was a hunter pacer in June, and we were about two weeks away. I started training in the ring with him and I took him out on the trail with my friend Peggy and her horse Belle.


Hot Shot was doing wonderful, so I thought that the hunter pacers should be a breeze. We continued training until the before the hunt. I gave him a bath and put him away so that he could rest.


The morning of the Sunday hunt, I grabbed all the tack that I needed, gave Hot Shot some grain, and brushed him off. It was around seven when the trailer pulled up. Peggy jumped out and we loaded my stuff into the back of the truck.


I should have known when Hot Shot wouldn’t get in the trailer that the day wouldn’t go good. We tried for ten minutes before he hopped on. He was fine the whole ride, no banging or stomping, he was quiet.


When we got to the hunt, I unloaded Hot Shot from the trailer and tied him up so that I could tack him up. He was half way tacked up when another horse scared him, he got loose and ran. It took us twenty five minutes to catch him and when we did, I still put that saddle on his back, put his bridle on and mounted.


Peggy and I went slow on the trail because it was a new atmosphere for Hot Shot and we wanted to make sure he was going to be okay. It was rainy and muddy but we kept on going.


The trouble started when Hot Shot started to jump puddles. It wouldn’t have been a big deal, but he wasn’t jumping every puddle, just random ones. And he wasn’t just jumping them, he was launching over them.


Then I started to trot, the trot turned into a canter. The canter turned into a gallop and the gallop turned into the weird powerful feeling that I knew was uncontrollable. I tried running him into a tree but when that didn’t work and he was going towards a stone wall which if he didn’t clear, we both would have been severely hurt. I jumped and I screamed Hot Shot’s name over and over again.


Peggy raced after him with Belle. It took them around ten minutes but she found him and she brought him back to me. I got back on, but was extremely timid. The first sign that I thought Hot Shot was going to run, I told Peggy I was getting off and would walk him back. She said don’t be silly and we switched horses. I warned her about what he does and we kept going, although even though I switched horses I wasn’t feeling any better, I was scared.


By the end of the hunter pace, he took off with Peggy and he almost threw her. Peggy has been riding for thirty eight years.


When we got back to my barn, Peggy help me unload and before she left she said, “I give you a lot of credit. You have stuck through a lot with horse. He’s tuff and he’s a pain in the butt and you’re still there for him.”


When Peggy left, I grabbed a bale of hay, placed it in Hot Shot’s stall and sat there and waited for the girls from my barn that went on the hunt to get back. I sat there for a few hours, crying some of the time, and the other time I was sleeping.


When the girls got back from the hunt, they unpacked all of their equipment and were bringing their horses in. Jodi came over to Hot Shot’s stall because she was wondering why I did not turn him outside in his paddock. When she looked over the stall, she saw me sleeping. She came in and woke me up and asked how the hunt went. When I answered, I took a little too long and I guess I had the lost look in my eyes that I didn’t know what I was doing anymore, trying to work with this horse.

Don’t get me wrong, I loved Hot Shot. I still do. But let’s face it; I am seventeen years old, worked twenty hours a week so that I could pay for board, the vet, the floater, get him new blankets and equipment and by the end of that, I had no money for myself. I also worked for my step-dad, which was stressful and was bringing me down back into a depression state. I had no free time because if I was not working, I was at the barn trying to train Hot Shot because I didn’t have the money to send him to a professional trainer.


I remember trying to figure out what to do. I felt lost and alone but there was something inside of me that couldn’t give up on Hot Shot just yet, I mean he still hadn’t given up on me. So when I came up to the barn, instead of going on trails, I lunged him in the ring. I put barrels and jumps up. He soared over them like he’s been doing it for years. I wanted to get on and jump them on him, but he took all of my confidence and that was something I wasn’t getting back so easily.


Ever since that hunter pace in June, there was a thought in the back of my mind that I didn’t want to pursue but I started to feel trapped. It was the beginning of July and it was my senior year of high school then college and I wouldn’t have that much time for my baby. I made up the decision in my mind that I was going to sell him. I rescued him, brought him to a place that made him well again. Made him feel loved and felt the same in return. As one of my friends once said, “Hot Shot was a one love kind of horse. He loved you the way that you could tell he was your only and that you were his only.” It sounds weird, considering that he was a horse, but I did, Hot Shot was my best friend, my everything, he was my rock and I knew that he loved me, but I knew I wasn’t doing what was best for him. I was working with him, but he needed to find a home that could give him everything, not just some things. I didn’t announce it yet, but I knew I was going to sell him.


On July fourth weekend, I stayed at Katie’s house and I helped her take care of the barn, because Jodi was on vacation. MT came and also helped out by doing stalls and paddocks and then we went to Home Depot. She was telling me how good Hot Shot was coming along and how much he loved me. I started to feel guilty. I didn’t want to hear that because I knew that he wouldn’t be around that much longer. I told MT that I was selling Hot Shot and her reaction was one that I did not expect. She kept talking and getting angrier that I would give up Hot Shot; I tried to explain it wasn’t because I didn’t love him, but because it was better for him in the long run. MT wouldn’t see my side of the story and I lost her as a friend. She wouldn’t answer my calls or texts and it hurt because I valued her opinion, but in the end I was not going to chose her over my horse, I was going to do the best for him.

When I finally told Jodi that I was going to sell Hot Shot, she seemed sad but she understood. She said that she could see it in my eyes. That she tried to help me after the first big fall, but after the second, that something changed.


I put Hot Shot’s add on the computer and I got a few responses. I wanted to sell him as soon as possible so that both of us wouldn’t get more attached more than we had to, so I wanted to have him sold by July 31, or I was going to give him to the MSPCA. One of the people interested in Hot Shot was a fourteen year old girl and her father from the Cape. I was a little wary of even considering selling him to her because he was a difficult challenge, but they insisted they would have him trained and I could visit whenever. Another interested candidate was two girls from Worcester MA. They were eighteen and twenty-one, they had money and the twenty-one years old, Jenna, went to school for equine training and I thought she knew what she was doing.


I ended up choosing the two girls from Worcester because it felt like the right choice. They drafted the contracts, and would provide the transportation. All I had to do was sign the papers.


It was July 31st, a hot Saturday morning. I woke up, made sure I had all of my paper that I had to give her; coggins and rabies. I walked over to my grandmother’s house, because she and my grandfather were taking me up to the barn.


We were driving there and they told me I was doing the right thing. I was too young for such a big responsibility, that I did it for seven months, brought him back to health and that was enough. I could say that I did a remarkable thing and I could always get another horse.


We pulled into the barn and I got out, went to the paddock and just sat with him for a little bit before the girls came to pick him up. I sat there and cried. I was losing my best friend that day. I could stop it if I wanted to but that would’ve been wrong. He was going to a home that would be best for him and that was most important.


When the girls arrived, they came right down and took him up to the trailer. Hot Shot wouldn’t go into the trailer and I should’ve said forget he’s not going but instead we kept trying to get him in the trailer. Jodi came out and once she did, he went in after a couple of tries.


As soon as he was loaded on, I left. We got into the car and went home. I didn’t want anything to do with the barn after because it was going to be too hard.


I texted Jenna to see how Hot Shot was doing and she told me he was getting settled and was doing fine. Probably about a week later, I got a call saying that she was riding Hot Shot the other day and he reared, which I think was because she had on spurs and he was already sensitive to touch. When he reared Jenna fell off and as she was falling she held the reins and he fell on top of her. She shattered her pelvis in eight places and wouldn’t be able to walk for seven months and it would be over a year before she could ride again. She wanted to know if I wanted Hot Shot back and I really wanted to, but I couldn’t. I didn’t have the money.


To this day, I regret selling him, but at the same time, I know that sometime soon he’s going to find a good home and he will get the training he needs. All I can hope is that he opens up his heart once again and they whoever who opens his heart to will be with him to the very end.


I decided for sure that I would be going to college in the equine field after Hot Shot left. Another thing I did in his memory was to get a tattoo of him on my back. The tattoo isn’t a portrait and some people don’t see the representation, but it’s general. I got it not just for him, but for all of the horses I’ve had a chance to ride and get to know and also lose.

I look back on the days that I spent with Hot Shot and I’m glad that I got to be apart of it. I got to be there for the good times, the bad times, and the struggles. I was there for everything that I wanted to be there for. He left hoof prints across my heart and because of him, I have learned so much, plus you can’t regret the things you learned from.

Hot Shot is a horse that will always be with me. He taught me so much and I will always remember that. There is nothing that can stand between a girl and her horse and I reached that level because there was no fight with my parents, no boy, no friends that ever stood between Hot Shot and me. I have the scars from the first fall on my cheek and those scars will tell stories that will last a lifetime.