Queen of The 3 Ninety-Eight Ranch

Rosie is a registered Half Arabian 11 year old sorrel (red) mare. My husband & I rescued Rosie and her dam along with another mare and her foal from a stable in Independence, MO in 1997. I say rescued because the four of them were being starved to death in the middle of summer when grazing and hay is abundant here even in the city. That stable has since gone out of business and to this day I don't think it even exists.

Rosie was weaned at 8 months old when her mother and the two other horses left our farm for new homes. Rosie was a lone horse for many years and because of that she pretty much laid claim to her 30 acres of pasture and her caretakers. She does have some personality quirks that some people couldn't deal with or handle her, so she will never be sold.

We first got a glimpse of this when the first farrier came to give her a trim. Handling her feet on a daily basis was routine. Her first farrier was a loud talking, bossy, know-it-all kid of about 27 years. Long enough to have some experience, but not long enough to have experienced everything. With little tolerance she allowed him to trim her front, but by the time he got around to her hind, she was going to kick him and his likings over the moon. After what seemed like forever of him fighting with her and she not allowing him to touch her, he gave up. I took his rasp, picked up her hind and ran it across both just to show her it could be done. Of course the whole time she stood still like it was old hat. Then there was the Mennonite farrier. She didn't like him much, but she learned to tolerate him because he was a quiet. A man of few words, but slow, slow, slow in his work.

One New Year's Eve when I had left her to the care of someone else with specific instructions on feeding her a new grain, Rosie came down with acute laminitis. We had no knowledge this was happening until she had been symptomatic for approximately 16 hours. The "caretaker" phoned to say something was wrong but she didn't have a clue what? This coming from someone who had been raised around horses, owned a foundered pony for years, and yet claimed to not know what the symptoms were indictive of. I could write more on that person, but it would serve no purpose here.
Several vet barn calls later and alot of watchful care, medicine and time, Rosie recovered. It was bearly noticeable to even the trained eye that she had been a victim of laminitis. Laminitis is inflammation of the laminae inside the the hoof. It attaches the hoof to the horse so to speak. The hoof swells on the inside constricting the blood flow, resulting in dead/dying laminae and this allows the coffin bone at the core of the hoof to rotate to some degree or another. It is very painful and a horse left untreated and in severe cases even those that are treated must sometimes (not always) be put down.
At any rate Rosie recovered and went on to rule her pasture kingdom once again. Once while quietly grazing she noticed a coyote chasing a deer across the field into the pasture. She took off at a dead run, cutting the coyote off and chasing him down. Lucky day for that deer, he got away and the coyote went away with an empty stomach and a few cracked ribs!
On several other occassions for one reason or another, some unknowing soul would wonder into the pasture unannounced and without my husband or I present. She charged them, chased them and literally would have hurt them had they not ran for their lives!
Was she part burro? Not hardly, possessive, territorial, THE QUEEN OF THE 3 Ninety Eight Ranch, that's who she is and no one better forget it!!! LOL!