by PK Hawk

Created on: September 03, 2010

 Dusty and Evelyn

Dusty was a nine-year-old red roan Appaloosa mare, that was being taken from the place where she grew up, and matured and was trained. She had become quite the gymkhana horse.  Sue, Dusty’s owner was leaving for college, and there was no one else that felt qualified to ride this powerful, gymkhana-trained mare.  She was being sold to a woman named Jean who lived out of the area she knew, and away from everyone and all the other animals where she had always felt so secure.

Now Dusty was going into the Inland Valley of Riverside County, California.   Sue, was practically the only person who ever rode Dusty, and she thought it would be wonderful for her beloved Dusty to live in the open, instead of living at a stable where she was boarded.

Dusty had been called "Killer" ever since she was first brought from the sheltered area of gymkhana arenas to the wide-open area where she was now going to live. Dusty had been used for barrel racing, pole bending, and keyhole competition.  Everything she did happened in an arena, except for her late afternoon and evening rides along the banks of the usually dry, cemented riverbeds of Orange County, California.

Evelyn’s sister Amy had a neighbor, Jean who bought Dusty, thinking that she was just the right size horse for her to ride in the hills and in the area surrounding the nearby lake. Jean’s property was about a acre in size, and she had plenty of room for Dusty to have a large paddock, where she could be unrestrained, and still have shelter from the extreme heat of the inland valley’s summer sun, as well as the occasional heavy rains. She would have plenty of room to run, loll in the sun, or roll in the dust. It appeared to be just about what any horse would want, except that Dusty had never before lived outdoors all the time. Sure, she was turned loose in the arena a couple of times a week to run loose, but this was going to be so new to her, like everything else, it would be a shock to her senses, to her eyes, nostrils and to her ears.

When Dusty was delivered to her new home, she was just about out of her mind with terror. She had been hauled all alone in a stock trailer, and she had apparently completely thrashed it during her sixty-mile ride over the California freeway system, through all the heavy traffic. Dusty had only been hauled in enclosed, comfortable horse trailers, and always with at least one other horse along for company, until that

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