Why I’m So Particular: Cooper’s Story

Cooper, before and after

If you spent any time around me at Breakaway Equestrian, or you have been around me at Aubrey Meadows, you have probably noticed that I’m particular about horse care. I’m the one double-checking that the right grain went into the right bucket, asking whether a trough was scrubbed or only topped off, and making sure every horse finished his grain before anyone walks away, as though each of those things were a matter of life and death. Sometimes, to me, they are. I believe horse care has to be done correctly, with honesty, and with real passion for the horse in front of you, every single day, and I’d like to tell you why. This is the one story I have never fully shared, and it belongs to a horse named Cooper.

When I was finally at a place in my adult life where I could afford a horse of my own again, I knew immediately that I wanted a thoroughbred. I scoured the internet until I found him, and I knew he was the one. His owner was also his trainer, out in Kentucky, and I trusted that person completely. I bought him sight unseen, off a video alone, and I did not do a pre-purchase exam. I’d love to tell you that I didn’t know better, but I did. I wanted him so badly that I let myself believe I didn’t need one, and that is a choice I will carry with me for the rest of my life.

He arrived in June 2015, and when he walked off that trailer, my husband thought they had given me the wrong horse. I understood why. The horse standing in front of us was severely underweight, covered in rain rot, and had snot dripping from his nose, and he looked nothing like the horse I had fallen in love with on a screen. My heart broke right there.

We pieced together what had happened. He had dropped weight in Kentucky, and to put it back on, his owner had fed him a pelleted grain. Cooper had undergone tieback surgery on the racetrack, which makes choking far more dangerous for a horse, and he had choked on those pellets and breathed them into his lungs. Our vet could not tell me whether he would survive, and I was terrified that I was going to lose him before I ever had the chance to know him.

We switched him to a textured grain he could cough up if something went wrong, and he went on a long list of medications along with every ounce of love we had to give, all to get him over the hump. He was at a full-care boarding barn, but the full care he needed was not happening. His grain had to be right every single time, his medications had to go in on schedule, and the small things that help a starving horse gain weight kept getting missed. What I did not understand yet was that Cooper will let himself get kicked off his food. He is not at the top of the pecking order, and when everyone in a pasture is fed together, he steps back and lets the other horses push him away from his grain. I later found out that the barn hand was tossing a scoop of grain straight onto the ground in the pasture rather than into a bucket or a pan, where it scattered everywhere, and even on the days his grain was right, the horses above him ate it while Cooper stood back and let them. I started driving out to the barn at least twice a day, every single day, to make sure he got what he needed, since I was not willing to lose him to somebody else’s oversight.

That is how Breakaway Equestrian was born. I never set out to start a business, and I opened that barn for one horse, so that Cooper would have a place where the right grain went into the right bucket every time. We moved him home in October 2015, and from that day on, he absolutely flourished. He gained weight, he grew strong and incredibly fit, and the horse who had stepped off that trailer looking like he might not make it became one of the best partners I have ever had. Watching him come back to life is still one of the proudest things I have ever been part of.

A few years later, he had a terrible accident in the pasture, and to this day we don’t know what happened. He damaged the suprascapular nerve in his shoulder, an injury called Sweeney that causes the shoulder muscles to waste away, and we spent a long time bringing him back. He came back completely sound, but I was not okay. I was so protective of him and so scared for him that I could not ride him without fear, and our relationship started to falter under the weight of it.

I loved him enough to believe that someone else might be better for him than I was, so I put him up for lease with the option to purchase. I spent hours on the phone with the girl who ended up taking him, and she seemed perfect. Little did I know that I was sending him right back into the same kind of conditions he had come from.

I don’t remember how I found him, but I did, and when I saw him, he was skin and bones again, covered in rain rot, and in terrible condition. It was the same story all over again: everyone in the pasture was fed together, Cooper let the other horses push him off his food, and nobody was watching closely enough to notice that he was not eating. The horse I had brought back from the edge once was right back where he started, and I had handed him over myself. That is the hardest sentence in this whole story for me to write. My husband dropped everything to go and get him, and in 2021, Cooper came home for good.

He has not been mentally fit to ride since then, and that is perfectly fine with me. He is fat and happy, living the retired life in my pasture with Graham, and he will never leave my care again.

What Cooper taught me

Cooper is the reason I will never again let wanting a horse talk me out of a pre-purchase exam, and the reason I tell every family I work with that the horse you want most is the one who most needs it. He is the reason I never assume that a price on a board contract means someone is watching my horse, and the reason I will always encourage you to ask any barn, ours included, who checks that every horse finished his grain and who gives the medications. He is also the reason I tell anyone leasing out a horse they love to put their right to visit in writing, since all those hours on the phone could never show me what one visit would have.

When you see me double-check a feed bucket, dump a green trough, or insist that horses be separated at feeding so the lowest horse in the pecking order still gets his grain, which I think of as Cooper’s rule, please know that none of it is about being fussy. I care about every one of those details because a horse I love once needed someone to make sure, and every horse at Aubrey Meadows deserves that same someone, a person who does the work correctly, with honesty, and with their whole heart.

Cooper’s story, and the lessons he taught me, run all the way through my book, Hard Truths, Soft Hands, available on Amazon in paperback and Kindle.

Andrea Hale
Program Manager, Aubrey Meadows Equestrian Center
Author of Hard Truths, Soft Hands