Sonny

Sonny was my one true horse not to be handed down to any sisters or ridden my mother. I got him when I was 13 or 14. I remember because Mum had threatened to take him off me. I had been really recalcitrant in Year 8 History and she said if I didn't pull my socks up she would sell him. 

He was a Thoroughbred cross with a Morgan Horse. A Morgan is an American breed of horse bred purposely for harness i.e. pulling carts etc. He'd been trained to be in harness too. He originally belonged to the Claney family out near Caniambo. They ran week long riding schools during the school holidays and that's were I first got to try him out.

He was a gelding and had a completely different temperament to the chestnut mare I had been riding. He was exceptionally quiet (meaning well broken in and not easily startled) and he loved people because he'd been raised in a stable as a foal from a young age. He would whicker when he saw you and run up to fence for attention. He was brown with a star on his forehead. He was excellent at one day eventing except he would invariably bolt for the finish line and I didn't have a hope in hell of hauling him in when he did that.

He hated my sister's black gelding. I'm not sure why. One time they chased each other through the metal cattleyards and he slipped and cut his flank wide open on a gate peg. My sister screamed when she saw the flap of skin hanging down. I shooed him into a concrete yard and we ran off to call the vet. The vet stitched him up and gave me an antiseptic spray to spray on him daily. 

It was summer. Flies came and laid eggs in the wound. Soon there were maggots. It was the most revolting recovery: cleaning maggots off the wound daily and spraying him with antiseptic.

When Mark became manager and caretaker of Eildon Trout Farm I somehow ended up bringing him across from Mum and Dad's farm to live with us. I think it was because Mum and Dad were moving into Shepparton and couldn't keep an eye on him plus I had half an idea I wanted to ride again. Mum kept trying to tell me, "He's 27 Anna, he won't be much fun to ride". And he wasn't. Not only would he get super excited and do giant pigrouts on me and sometimes a full blown head between the legs buck, even though I had lunged him to work that urge out of him, his back legs would invariably go on him and I'd feel like I was going to fall off him.

The trout farm was on river flat and that meant it produced a very lush pasture. Unfortunately, despite making Sonny a really small paddock, he foundered continually and that led to him getting ulcers on his hooves which then got infected.

The normal vet was away and the locum couldn't come out and see me. He showed me how to use an enormous needle to inject into Sonny's neck to treat the infection.

Eventually, the farrier came out to have a look and told me about another farrier near Yarck who practised natural hoofcare (no shoes) and that would stop Sonny from getting ulcers and harden his feet up. offered to float Sonny out to the farm for treatment.

The farm was an organic horse farm that had Willing Workers of Organic Farms, WWoofers as they were normally known, working there. Mostly German, female backpackers. The new farrier cut sonny's hoof back to the bone and had him in a small yard on a thick rubber where he was fed nothing but very low nutrition hay.

He was there for a month before I couldn't stand it any longer and decided it wasn't worth his suffering for the age he was let alone the expense of him being agisted there so I got him floated back to the farm. I let him out with the cows on the river flat that night I felt so sorry for his prison-like treatment.

I can't remember if he foundered again but think I noticed he was lame and hobbling around again one day in the paddock. Mark had just decided to leave his job at the trout farm and we were going to move 3 hours away to Ballarat which meant finding somewhere to agist him again. I thought enough was enough and it was time to get the vet in to euthanase him.

The vet came. I invited a friend who loved horses and whose Arabian mare had been on agistment on the farm to come and support me through the process. The vet was young and Sonny, being the people loving horse he was, trotted up to the Vet as if he was still a young colt. The vet said, "Are you sure you want to do this?" and we went ahead.

It was an awful process to watch. The most lurid purple fluid in an enormous needle was being injected into my horse. Not just one needle but several. One by one. At one point I saw fear in my horse's eyes and then I saw him get down on his knees and then lie on his side and his breath became slower and slower and tears started flowing from my eyes and he passed away. 

Shortly afterwards the bobcat driver arrived to dig him a riverbed grave and Macka and I and Mark all went back to farmhouse and drank scotch to recover from the ordeal.