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.