Welcome to the Fin Files. Fin, registered name HR’s Blazeoffire, was introduced to me April 20, 2019 via a Facebook message from Save Our Standardbreds From Slaughter (SOSS), a group that works with the Standardbred Retirement Foundation to move Standardbred horses from kill pens and other desperate situations, to safe and long term homes. It was time for the Van Wyngarden family to add another horse to the mix, but this wasn’t in ANY WAY what I had planned.
And I will forever be grateful that my plans got derailed. Fin Files will share our story as it unfolds.
The Players in This Crazy Game of Life
Me! I’m Emma. I’ve been a horsewoman for about 30 years. Nothing special-I love my animals and want to take great care of what I’ve been given. And keep everyone happy all the time. Now that one gets me in trouble sometimes…
Eric is my loving, kind, supportive husband who may (often) cast a quizzical glance my way, but is always game to dig in and help.
Trouble is kind of the reason for this whole crazy turn of events. But Trouble was always the reason for something in my life. I watched his birth when I was 11 years old and I held his head as he was euthanized just shy of his 25th birthday. Irreplaceable doesn’t begin to describe my nutty, beautiful, sweet, bull in a china shop Quarter Horse.
Laagie. The other reason for this story. Laagie is a 2001 Standardbred gelding I have had the pleasure of owning for the last 13 years. He is an incredibly well bred giant Bay who didn’t care for racing (much to his former owners disappointment). He quite prefers hugs and kisses and eating to that silly trotting like the wind stuff, but is a wonderfully willing and sweet riding horse. He’s a bit of a diva monster to other horses, but only because he should be the center of everyone’s universe. Just ask him!
Fin is a 2008 Standardbred gelding. We picked up Fin on April 27, 2019 from a feed lot in Lawler, Iowa. He was in decent health, and came from an Amish background. He never raced. That’s all we knew about him.
The Why
Trouble had been gone for over a year now. Laggie had been alone that long, and herd animals suffer with no herd. I didn’t notice it at first other than the obvious stuff-whinnying and general confusion right away. But life goes on (or so they say) and we got back into the daily grind. He really seemed ok. Better than me, for sure. But toward the end of riding season last year, through the winter and into early Spring, I had a different horse. My typically friendly and calm gelding was pinning his ears and trying to bite me during grooming. Rides were a crap shoot. Sometimes they were ok, but more often than not they bordered on dangerous. Something small would unhinge my uber confident, intelligent Laagie, and I would end up dismounting and leading him home, or cutting my ride super short, or not taking a path we’d taken a million times, because I now didn’t know if he was going to loose it.
Eric and I had talked for a while about getting another horse, but didn’t want the extra expense, as we were saving up for land of our own. It became obvious to me that we needed a buddy for Laagie. His anxiety was not safe or healthy. It took a while, but Eric got on board too, so we started shopping. Now I’m an intelligent and thrifty woman. I wanted to be wise with this that was going to cost us time and money, and it’s no secret that we’re not swimming in cash, so I needed to figure out what we were looking for. And what we could spend.
(Here’s a quite personal side note that I wouldn’t mention except that it colored this whole process significantly. I’m a pleaser. Or a recovering pleaser, at least. Must keep the peace, must make the right choices so everyone is happy, must make everyone proud, must be worth their time, must please, must, must, must! I know the futility and utter ridiculousness of that mindset, hence the ‘recovering’ in front of pleaser, but unfortunately it’s not something that can be killed overnight. So I’m working on it. And I am an adult woman who is capable of making good and healthy decisions. But this buy another horse thing? I could just hear them all saying it-Really? You’re spending money on your frivolous hobby that will double your monthly frivolous hobby expenses? Oh, because your other horse is lonely? That’s convenient… Don’t you want to get ahead in this life? Come on Emma, spend your AND ERIC’S hard earned dollars on something that matters.)
With my pleaser nature firmly in tow I decided I would explain things like this: Yes, we’re in the market for other horse, but it’s got to be sound (no extra vet bills!), have smooth gaits so Eric will have safe and enjoyable rides with me (relationship building time together!), broke enough to not need much of my extra ‘frivolous hobby’ time (wise, yes, very wise), sane enough to be ridden by the road, not too old, not too young, large enough to pack around my man sized man, and cheap enough to not offend anyone. Basically a Unicorn. I knew it was unlikely, but how else could I justify spending, not saving, this money I was about to spend? I put so much pressure on myself to find this horse. So that others would think I was wise. How foolish.
Now if you’ve ever listened to my podcast, The Horse Cure, you’ll know that I’m very pro adoption. What a gift! To be able to provide a loving and secure home for an animal in need! But, unsurprisingly, not many adoptable horses in the Midwest checked every box on that long list I had. So I took to the internet to shop. Again, unsurprisingly, not much the internet had fit my list either.
The first horse I went to look as was a very nice Thoroughbred mare close to where I live. She checked a lot of those boxes, and sometimes I still wish I would have purchased her. But my story would look quite different if I had, and Fin’s may have been quite short. Midwest Spring weather kept us from looking at the second horse on my shopping list. A few weeks had gone by at this time, and I was getting anxious. I needed a buddy for Laagie. He was not a happy horse. He was anxious and depressed. He was snarky. He wasn’t himself. The next horse I chose to look at was an off the track Thoroughbred. He was close by, and adoptable ( Iowa HART)! On paper (or the internet, in this case) he looked like a great fit! I couldn’t wait to meet him, so I set out on Saturday the 19th of April to give him a try. It was horrible. He was a very nice horse, but CLEARLY not the horse for me. (He has since been adopted by a wonderful couple better suited for him).
Then came Sunday, and the message that changed it all.
