Chief

Lesson Pony

Meet Chief, his full name, Kiowa War Chief, he is a Morgan Arabian and he was born in 1983, making him 41 years old! The equivalent of about 120 human years! and still doing fantastic for his age!

Because of his long life his story is a very long one, with all the ups and downs. We would like to write down the entirety of his history at some point, but I’ll attempt to summarize it for now.

Mary Homicz’s godmother had a horse dumped on her, almost 20 years ago now, and asked her mother if she would like a horse. She said she would take him if she could saddle him. He was a stallion at the time, and unfortunately aggressive due to being abused for about 10 years. But luckily they had a click moment and he allowed her to approach and do all the shenanigans that eventually led him to his new home, with reluctance on his part of course. She had him retrained and he became her AERC Endurance horse for about 10 years There are many other details I unfortunately have to leave out.

He was the horse Mary learned to ride on herself, after her Shetland pony Patches. They did everything from endurance, gymkhana, obstacle challenges, CSHA Royalty, etc, together.

He’s always absolutely loved endurance riding and did relatively well for himself in it. In 2022 he competed in his last 25 mile ride with one of our students, it was his last ride and her first. This earned him the Longevity Award with AERC. He is now semi retired doing riding lessons and teaching new generations.

Due to his age he no longer has teeth. Horses teeth grow throughout their lives. Eventually, if they live long enough, there will be no more teeth left to grow. Chief has reached this point and can only eat a soft food diet. He’s been doing well the last 5-7ish years on this diet and has kept his weight and muscle mass. Now, also due to his no teeth he can choke if he swallows anything solid. The only time he has done this is when he was depressed from not being rode during the horrible fires in Trinity County. As long as he’s given attention and exercised enough he stays happy and healthy. He has now been brought fully into Mary’s care in Carlotta where the weather and terrain will be much better for his finally years.

We make sure to ensure a balance of just enough exercise to keep him going but not too much so as not to break him down. Being a lesson pony has been perfect for him and he enjoys the work so much he rushes to Mary at the gate and stuffs his head in the halter. Being a senior horse with his special diet and exercise regime has been a great learning opportunity for all his students.