by Charity Nicole Robertson

Created on: May 23, 2010

It was a snowy, winter day when Harry DeLeyer arrived at the horse auction where he hoped to find a horse who had the potential to become a good jumper. All of the decent horses had already been sold, and the only ones left were the ones headed for the dog food factory. Harry was pretty disappointed that he had missed the auction and decided that he might as well take a look at the ones headed for the factory.

He saw a flea-bitten, gray, plow horse, which had some nasty wounds on his legs that had something special about him which he just couldn't explain, so right then and there he decided to get him. Harry paid eighty dollars for the gray and took him home.  When he got there, his children named the horse Snowman because he sported a blanket of snow on his back.

Snowman improved rapidly.  Harry soon discovered that Snowman was an excellent horse for young children and so he used him for jumping lessons. Everyone fell in love with him at the stables and soon his neighbors offered him $140 if he would sell Snowman to them.  That was twice as much as Harry had paid for him, and he accepted.

The only problem was that Snowman wasn't content with this arrangement and kept jumping the neighbor's fence to come home. Harry found this a little unbelievable because he had never seen him jump over anything higher than a log and the fences were very high. Soon, the neighbors tired of the hassle of trying to keep Snowman in the pasture, asked Harry to take him back.

Harry had always dreamed of being the owner of a champion jumper, but he didn't have the money to purchase one so he decided to try Snowman and see if he had any potential as a show jumper. Two years after Harry had bought him, Snowman won the National Horse Show and a year later won the Stake at the same place. This started the amazing career of a horse that nobody wanted and who was on his way to a meat factory, but because of the compassion of one man, this horse was given a second chance at life.

Snowman went on to win the American Horse Show Association of the Year twice in a row, and during the same two years, he won the Professional Horsemen's Association Championship, also. At the Smithtown Horse Show he won a lead line class and then went on to win the open jumper championship, all during the same day. He was also induced into the Show Jumping Hall of Fame in 1992 and a Breyer horse model has also been made of him.

This great horse continued his career for five more years until he was thirteen years old. He was then retired to Harry's farm where he happily lived until he died at the ripe old age of twenty. Snowman was so gentle that he would willingly jump over a live horse, and he would also allow eight kids to jump from his back into the lake.

Thousands fell in love with this grey horse that proved to everyone that no matter what your circumstances are you can still surpass them and excel in life. Snowman had a rough start in life as a plow horse, but with a little help he pulled ahead and became one famous show horse.   

Sources:

http://www.showjumpinghalloffame.net/inductees/snowm an.shtml

http://www.lds.org/conference/talk/display/0,5232,49 -1-602-32,00.html

http://www.horsefix.com/pages/Famous%20Horses/famous -snowman.htm

http://www.associatedcontent.com/article/2767164/sno wman_legendary_american_show_jumping.html?cat=53

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