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!