Amy and Abby

Abby bears a striking resemblance to my very first horse, Amy. In fact, I had no intentions of being a horse owner again, and then during a visit to Indiana Horse Rescue to help my sister find a horse, I encountered Abby and ended up buying her a month later as a result of that resemblance. (A blog entry about that can be read here.)

 Amy (with Cee, Leslie, and a friend, 1980s.)

 Abby and me, 2012. (She loves a good scritch!)

Not only is their color similar, their size is, too, and so are their personalities. Both have a bit of sass in them, enough that it added to their personalities, but not enough to make it difficult to work with them.

Amy was my horse of a lifetime, and we bonded deeply. And since she lived on our property, I was responsible for her feeding and care so we were together several times a day all the way through junior high and high school and on into college. That bond we built went deep - never have I loved another horse the way I loved Amy. (Abby is a very, very close second.)

When I married Craig, we left Indiana after he finished grad school here at Purdue and moved to Central Michigan University for two years and then the University of Illinois for twenty-seven years. We started our family and I simply did not have the funds to pay to board Amy nor could we afford a horse property. So I left Amy in the care of my sister and she lived her life out happily at the farm Leslie bought.

With one teeny, tiny glitch...

Someone put a yearling stud colt into pasture with her by mistake and she ended up presenting Leslie with a foal eleven months later. Leslie kept Rusty and had him trained, and then one day had a bad accident on him. He reared up and fell over backwards with her. Fortunately she was wearing a helmet (which was broken by the force of the fall), but she ended up selling him shortly after that.

Amy and Pokey, 1974. 

Abby, 2017. Just look at that resemblance!

Amy, me, and Cee, 1976. 

Ready to take Craig for a trail ride back when we were still in the dating phase of our relationship.

A friend once asked me if I thought Abby was actually a reincarnated Amy. She pointed out their close similarities in nearly every aspect and how uncanny that was. And she's right, they could almost be the same horse.

But I think they are two separate individuals, and that I am just lucky enough to have had lightening strike twice when it comes to horse ownership. Two sweet gals, both of whom hold big pieces of my heart.