Jim - Description

Last Friday I started writing up descriptions of some of the rescue horses at Borderlands. I finally had a few minutes and thought I would write about Jim.


I’m not sure if I’d classify Jim as a rescue or not. I’ll tell the story and let you decide. Ever since losing the very first horse, Tiny Dictator, I was on the lookout for a different horse. I had my criteria but I hadn’t come across a horse yet that matched. My criteria was as follows: gelding, short (14.2hh or there abouts), older, gaited, and local.

In the summer of 2009 I found a horse that matched all of the criteria. He was a 14.2hh, Tennessee Walker that was advertised as 18 years old (there’s more to that story), gaited, and only an hour away. The owner at the time was a bit hard to catch up with and other activities seemed to continue to pop up.

I kept noticing “Jim” in the local ads. Every time I saw the ad, I would drool over Jim thinking he was the perfect match. It took until November to finally schedule a chance to meet Jim. We drove the hour to Worthington, MN.

The owner did warn me that Jim was standoffish and a bit hard to catch until you got him into the barn. I wasn’t too worried. There are other horses at Borderlands that have similar quirks and we all seem to manage. The owner lunged Jim both directions and for quite some time. She said that he always needed to be lunged for riding. Instead of having the owner hop on and ride, I hopped on instead. I got the impression the owner wasn’t going to offer (since it was her daughter’s horse). Right from the beginning I thought I didn’t have any control. I was disappointed since Jim met all my criteria but I wasn’t sure about his riding ability.

I spent the entire month of November trying to decide. It’s a life altering decision to bring a horse in and keep him for life. Then the owner said that if I didn’t make a decision, she was taking Jim to a horse auction December 4th. I knew what the outcome would be for poor Jim if he was taken to an auction. His legs were toed out, he was older, and most people in this area prefer Quarter Horses to Tennessee Walkers. I knew she wouldn’t get her asking price. I thought about going to the auction and buying him there but didn’t want to take the chance. So I decided that Jim would come to Borderlands.

We made arrangements to pick Jim up the day after the horse sale on December 5th (I wanted to go to a different horse auction to see prices). The day was bitterly cold. I packed a blanket since I hate hauling horses in an open stock trailer. The now previous owner pulled Jim out and we talked for a few minutes about the prices at the auction she went to. As I predicted, the prices were low and the horses she brought didn’t bring much. She had consigned Jim to the sale but because I told her I wanted him, she took a different horse. I feel bad for the horse but at least I know Jim will be safe with us forever.

The day was so cold that by the time I had the blanket on Jim, my fingers were completely dumb. The previous owner handed me Jim’s coggins paperwork since we were crossing the state border. Jim loaded right up into the trailer and we headed home. We stopped a couple of times to check on Jim since it was so cold.

A few days after getting Jim home, I looked at his coggins. Jim was advertised as an 18 year old gelding. The previous owner said they had Jim for two years. The coggins said Jim was 20 years old. I don’t know if this was a simple oversight or if it was trying to pad the truth. In either case, I would have still looked at Jim. We didn’t get much chance to mess with Jim for awhile afterwards. The weather turned for the worse in December and it was all we could do to get everyone fed and watered every morning and night. The previous owner warned me that Jim occasionally gets soar in his front legs when ridden too hard or too long. When I would bring him his food, he would take to lifting one front foot. I was worried about him. Jim soon started losing weight after we brought him home. I was very worried. By the middle of December, I was worried I’d made a wrong decision. I knew we made the right decision by getting him out of there so he wouldn’t have to run through an auction and go to an unknown fate but he was SO standoffish. But Jim was depressed.

In the spring after the terrible winter of 2009-2010, I put Jim in with Maverick. They soon became best friends and are hard to separate. Soon Jim's depression went way. We then introduced Jim into the big herd. We had to force the issue with Jim being caught and going into the barn. I started graining him in the barn to convince him that getting caught wasn’t such a bad thing. He was still standoffish but if we approached slow, stopped for a second, and then approached even slower, Jim would allow us to walk up to him. Now that’s not my normal procedure but that seems to be the way Jim prefers to handle all situations.

Skip forward to fall of 2010. Jim turned a huge corner. He’s now the friendly little gelding I knew was tucked away. I was worried that we weren’t “his people” but it seems that we’re now friends. I’m not sure if it’s the new grain mash he’s getting or that we’ve taken to short rides down the road.

In either case, Jim is at the gate waiting for his grain every evening. He’s such an easy boy to handle that he’s fun to mess with now. Of course I realized that he’s actually a treat boy. He turns super friendly when he knows there are treats involved. I’m still shocked at his personality change but I’ll take it. He went from standoffish, to depressed, to standoffish but tolerating me, to tolerating me, to wanting to be handled.

We know that Jim’s previous owner’s daughter rode him as her sole riding horse. I’ve found that horses ridden by teenage girls tend to constantly be ready to run and go, go, go. When I test rode Jim, je was expecting to head out on a long, fast ride. We’ve since discovered that both Jim and I like to mosey along down the road and occassionally go into his running walk.

I didn’t ride Jim again (after the initial test ride) until late summer of 2010. He had been so depressed all winter and so standoffish until the fall that I simply wanted him to be a horse. The previous owner said Jim paced and was gaited. So I finally got the urge and hopped on. He was a completely different horse when I rode him. I instantly feel in love with him and knew I hadn’t made a mistake by bringing him home and saving him from going to auction. Riding with Jim is an absolute rush.

So you decide. Jim was meant to go into the personal herd but was headed to auction if we didn’t take him in. We paid $500 which was the asking price of the owner (although she jacked the price to $1000 in other ads). Had Jim run through the auction, he would have only brought in a couple hundred dollars and been tossed from one owner to another until he was caught up in the slaughter pipeline. So it’s hard to say if Jim is a rescue or if he’s a personal riding horse. No matter how we look at it, Jim is now a permanent fixture at Borderlands.