We wanted to share with you an essay written by one of our young field trial friends, Jorja Potter, for a school assignment. She's 13 and has been going to field trials, literally, her whole life. It deals with a problem horse and we know that lots of our friends and customers own horses, so we thought it might be of interest.  Besides offering some advice on a perplexing bucking problem, it's also a great story of a young girl's willingness to stick with a problem and see it through to the end. By the way, Jorja received an A+ from her teacher!

At ten years old, I longed for a special horse. I wanted a friendly field
trial horse, so I could ride it in field trial competitions. A field trial
is a dog hunt using horse for transportation. Three years ago my mom and dad
took me to Ionia, my dad's friend had a horse for sale. This gelding was
15.3 hands, sorrel red, 10 years old, and he was a walking horse. For that
whole weekend I watched that horse. I was looking for a horse because I
didn't have one at the time. At the last day of the field trial my dad asked
me if I wanted to go look at him and of course I said "yes." In the
afternoon my dad walked over to look at the horse. His name was Phar-Lap, he
was named after an Australian racehorse, which was murdered for money.

Phar-Lap came right up to me, he was on a black rubber stake out on the
bottom of the hill, and I could hear dogs barking in the background. When I
pet him it felt like velvet under my hand. Then my dad asked me if I wanted
to take him home, I told him I would think about it, even though I wanted to
say yes. So the day went by and my dad told the owner, Alan Davison, that
we would take him home and try him out. This was the only time we would be
able to take him because they live in Colorado. We took Phar-Lap home and he
got along with all our other horses. I rode him every day, and he was great.
Phar-Lap had very good ground manners and he was very gaited too! So my dad
bought him for me. I was very excited. After about a month, Phar-Lap started
acting up, like rearing-up and bucking, so my mom thought he was unsafe to
ride. I tried to control the rearing and bucking as much as I could by
scolding. That didn't work but it helped. Phar-Lap became a mean horse, so I
didn't ride him for a long time.

My dad thought he was useless, so we both decided to sell him. For about a
half a year all sorts of people, tall and short, came over to ride him. But,
every time someone would ride Phar-Lap, he would rear-up and buck. No one
bought him. I rode Phar-Lap because I had not ridden him in a while. I
noticed he was hitting one leg with the other leg. So, I told my dad, and he
called the vet, Todd.

When Todd came to examine Phar-Lap there was a light foggy mist and a heavy
fog. The vet checked him and diagnosed him with Strung-Halt. It was a
ligament disorder. The vet said he could do a small surgery but there was a
chance that it would not work. Right when I heard the words "don't work," I
decided that I would not go through with the surgery. When my dad and I
walked the vet to his car the sun was out and there was a little rainbow. I
went online almost every night to see if I could find any web sites on
Strung-Halt. Finally, one lady online who wrote that she had a horse that
had Strung-Halt and she put sturdy neoprene boots on the horse and it helped
absorb shock. That's what I did, and he was a much happier horse. I told my
farrier (shoe trimmer) and he shoes his feet differently now, and that
helps. At this time I ride Phar-Lap every other day and he shows
improvement every day.

Through all this I learned that horses always have reasons for what they do,
horses don't do wrong things just for nothing. I also learned that if I was
persistent I could find answers to problems.