Misread Popeye

I was given a limited amount of information about Popeye when I brought him home. I had seen him in the pasture, and had spoken with his owners. His previous owners were perfectly nice people, though it was obvious that they were eager to thin out their very large herd and didn’t much care where they went. That was ok with me, I wasn’t searching for my next World Grand Champion, I was just looking to help out some horse owners in need, and this couple fit right in that category! I am very used to attempting to read a horse on my own and kept an eye on Pops as they gave me what little info they had about him. They told me that Popeye was a young stallion, they believed him to be 2 years old, and he was not like the rest of the herd, he was much quieter. They went on to tell me that he had gotten an eye infection as a weanling that they had been unable to treat since he was not tame enough to be caught and handled. As they were talking, I had no reason to think what they said wasn’t true, even today I don’t believe they lied to me. The entire time I was watching Pops, and he remained perfectly still. While he was staring at us, the rest of the herd was running back and forth, and Pops never joined them. He seemed gangly, like a youngster, and he had his head tilted to the side as if he was curious about us. It wasn’t until I spent more time with him that I realized that I had misread Popeye, he was not what he appeared to be at all!

When I brought Pops home, he was put into an indoor pen, about 60 x 60, just half of my hay barn. I checked him out from the doorway, not able to get close to him, and guessed his height, weight etc from a distance. He was very nervous in his new home, he looked to be about 15-15.2 HH, long legged with room to grow, and I guessed he would top out at about 16 HH. He was really quite a score for a rescue horse; he’d be easy enough to place! But first impressions can often be wrong, Popeye is actually only 14.2, and while he always seems to get fatter, he’s not getting any taller.
The next morning was when I figured out that I had misread my new horse. I wake up pretty early in the morning to feed, usually before the sun gets up. I put a headlamp on my hat, and headed to the hay barn to feed. But when I opened the door to the front half where Popeye was living, I was greeted with ferocious surprise. Pops had staked the hay barn as his territory and I was not a welcomed guest. He came at me like the angry stallion he was, his head low to the ground, his wild and tangled mane straight up in the air, and his teeth bared. All I really remember in that instant is seeing the hole in his head where his eye should have been, fire shooting out his nose and snarl coming out of him.  I slammed that door pretty quick on him and went back to my house to wait for the sun to come up!

I spent the next several days watching Pops from the outside of his pen. I would throw food at him over the gate that led to the pasture and sat outside trying to get him used to my presence. I learned a lot by just watching him. For instance, Pops looks so big because he puffs himself up to what looks like twice his size in order to frighten you off. It’s pretty intimidating, and if you didn’t back off of him, he would strike. Popeye never took his eye off of you, he always tilted his head, not out of curiosity, but because he can’t see you clearly unless he does. Pops would never spin and run off, he was very worried about hitting something since he can only see half the world. When Pops would touch the wall with his blind side he would automatically kick at it to defend himself, when I put his feed tray in with him the first time, he attacked it to destroy it before seeing if it was something safe. I have met some rank horses before, but never one with such a well-developed fight instinct.

It wasn’t until several months later, when Popeye had his gelding surgery that I learned a whole lot more about him. Popeye was actually 8 years old, the blindness in his eye wasn’t just an infection, he had suffered a severe blow to the head. In addition to the damage to his eye, he had a broken rib that had healed crooked, and his nose had been broken. From his old injuries we guessed that an older stallion had attacked him when he was a youngster, which explained why he never joined the rest of the herd. He had a fear of not just humans, but horses as well. There is also a question as to whether or not he has suffered some brain damage due to his head injury. My vet was doubtful Pops would be able to come around to being a useful horse.

By that point I had invested a lot of time just into getting Pops settled enough to be handle for gelding. Popeye had proven to me that he had the ability to learn, if at a slower pace than most horses. He didn’t learn the same way as others, and he was, and still is, a test of my creativity. He has taken me on journey through horsemanship that I never would have expected!    

Do you think it’s about time to start a Popeye blog? Seems like as good a time as any! Many of you have been following my Pops since the day I met him in January of 2011, but very few people truly know who he is and what we have been through to create the relationship that we have now. That’s my fault, when I rescued Pops, it was with the intent of finding a suitable home for him. So I left out a few details thinking that I didn’t want to scare anyone off before he was ready for adoption. It just never occurred to me that he would never get to a point where he could be passed onto someone else. I have since resolved myself to the fact that Popeye will never really bond with anyone else and there will always be the chance he may revert to the horse he was when I found him, too dangerous to risk “rehoming”.

Popeye is a 10 year old Anglo-Arabian who came from a family breeding program that had grown out of control. He grew up in a pasture surrounded by a large herd. As a weanling, he was as curious as any other colt, which got him in a bit of trouble. He was attacked by an adult stallion, a blow to the head left permanent damage to his right eye, leaving him blind, his nose was broken and he has a few broken ribs. Due to the entire herd being unmanageable at that time, Popeye’s injuries were left untreated. Pops spent the next 8 years without human contact, and he avoided the other horses out of fear of another attack. By the time I met him, he had become a herd of one, and had grown accustomed to fighting anything or anyone who approached him to defend his solitude.

It would be nice to say that I rescued Pops out of the goodness of my heart, but the reality is, after the first time I saw him, I turned away, willing to let him go to slaughter. There was a lot of drama surrounding the rescue of the entire herd of 22 that Pops lived with, I won’t go into the details of that fiasco, but I took on Pops to get him away from being exploited to raise funds and publicity for people I just didn’t trust. I don’t regret it after tracking the progress of a handful of horses that came from his home. Pops was certainly better off with me. 

Over the past two and a half years, I have wondered whether or not the best thing for Pops would be to have him put down. It has been recommended to me by friends, colleagues, equine professionals and the though has crossed my mind more than once. I have never thought that the people recommending it to me were wrong, or bad people, but I chose not to do it. I didn’t do it because Popeye has shown me that he has the ability, if not always the willingness, to learn, and to adapt. I don’t know if I was right to spend so much time and effort on a horse like Pops, but I did and here we are.

In telling his stories over the past couple years, there have been a few details that were left out, at times I think I made handling the feral horse seem to easy. But in reality, it was a dangerous and hard journey to get to this point. So it seems about time to tell the stories without leaving the scary parts out. While Pops barely resembles the monster he was when he arrived, there were some very creative things I did to get him here. Many of you just didn’t hear about them because you would have thought I was insane for even trying, and I don’t regret any of it. So here’s blog entry number one, a brief intro to me and my Pops. He is my friend, he tries to be my partner, he is my feral monster, and I love him for all his faults.