08/01/2026
Hunter Spring Farm is left with a big, grey horse shaped hole in our hearts this weekend.
We’ve decided to just share what Miss Lizzie wrote about him on her personal page here in remembrance of our boy.
Thank you to everyone who has called, texted, and especially those who showed up and supported us yesterday.
When you do this professionally, day in and day out with these animals, you love them all. But some of them stand out as the incredible and special horses of your lifetime. Yesterday, I said goodbye to one of the horses that has had one of the biggest parts in shaping my life and my riding career.
Sky Blue Hunter - also know as Elliot, land whale, baby white horse, or Chuggy… a registered appendix QH. Born 2/29/2004. So he was 22, or “5” as I always joked, because he was born on leap day. Yesterday I had to make the devastating decision to let my big grey horse go.
Grey horses are born a much darker color. Because of a gene mutation that causes their coats to go from dark (often black!) to progressively lighter shades of grey as they age, over 80% of grey horses form melanoma tumors because the change hyper activates the pigment making cells and causes unstable cells that can become tumors. Elliot has had some small ones since I purchased him almost 13 years ago. We’ve monitored them closely over the years, and have participated in some incredible treatments and medication trials which slowed the growth for many years.
But as I always knew they some day would, yesterday the tumors took him from me. Over the last 4-6 weeks, the tumors under his tail and along his a**s, where they are most common, have grown rapidly. Other tumors, both external and internal that I could palpate, also grew or formed. With that, I knew there were tumors internally growing as well, and I knew one day they would take him. But until then, he was healthy, in good weight, eating, pooping, teaching lessons, and being a general nuisance. So, we enjoyed the days.
Thursday night, I had a weird feeling. I often get these premonitions when someone close to me is at the end of their life. I’ve never known why, but I’ve done it since childhood. I manifested that energy by asking my husband to look over the horse for me. He agreed that everything I assed was right - they’d grown a lot and quickly. They were likely internal. And one day they would take him. Elliot walked up to Blaine and nuzzled and lipped at his cheek. He pushed his nose away and said “I am not the one who needs the emotional support here”. And like he understood, he turned to me and began nuzzling my face, lipping at my cheeks and my hair, waiting for me to smooch his nose to take a turn horsey kissing my cheek. As I giggled at his antics, I asked Blaine “how long do you think I have with this clown? He will be a hard goodbye, and only two years after Tuff, I’m not ready to say goodbye to this horse”. My husband simply said “he will tell you. It could be tomorrow, it could be 3 years from now. But he will tell you, and you’ll know.”
I kissed my horse and closed the door, and got up to feed yesterday morning like always. I put him in his stall, threw my feed, taught my first lesson. And my second lesson went to grab him, and he was down in the stall. Over the next hour, things progressed. As the yesterday of Blaine and I’s conversation reached mid day, my horse told me. It’s almost a certainty that his tumors internally grew, and blocked or strangled vital organs, or maybe even had ruptured. With the help of much pain medication, he managed to head outside, into the sunshine, and laid down in the pretty sun on the grass where we said goodbye to him surrounded by people who loved him, and he left the physical world with a mouthful of grass as his final snack.
Elliot was a huge piece of my identity and who I am today. He’s dabbled in everything. With many AQHA points and a top 5 finish in the nation in Hunter hack when we actively showed AQHA, he also showed locally. We won many ribbons, trophies, and awards together. We showed in EVERYTHING! Hunter under saddle, western pleasure, equitation, horsemanship, trail, showmanship, and over fences classes. When I first restarted my lesson program, he started right alongside me and helped me live my dream. He taught children and adults alike. He taught them to ride, made them laugh, and built their confidence. He gave therapeutic lessons to children with special needs. He recently taught a boyscout troop to ride to prepare for a scout trip.
And then, I set my sights to my big dream. Showing in the working hunter classes at the Quarter Horse Congress. And when I sought guidance for that journey, it led me to Blaine. What started as hauling in for lessons turned to me moving grey to Clearview. And then Covid hit, and I had a lot more time to spend learning from Blaine at Clearview. Blaine and I became close friends, and when circumstances changed, we ended up dating. You know what happened next. We wouldn’t be together today if my dream with that big grey horse hadn’t brought us together.
We made it to the congress with Blaine’s help not once, but twice. I’ll share those professional photos another time in another post. And we did a lot of other things along the way. Blaine, being absolutely NOT a hunter rider, started to introduce me to the sport of eventing. Not having a horse to event, I started taking some dressage lessons on grey, and asked him to jump cross country fences. We managed to finish on our dressage score at the very first mini trial I ever showed at. My big, fancy hunter jumped around double clear on our cross country course and gave me confidence in the early days of learning to ride cross country fences.
After the second year at the congress, I knew in my heart Elliot was ready to step down to an easier job. He retired to the life of a beginner lesson horse. He still took beginner kids to horse shows, taught them to ride, and taught lots of adults too. Always safe, but also a little stubborn, he taught a lot of people and gave many confidence on horseback. He even filled in at a pony club rally for kids whose horse colicked and helped them earn ribbons there.
When Blaine and I got married, we each rode our very special horses into the reception together. He chose Riley, naturally. But I chose the horse that brought us together. The big grey carried me into the party celebrating my new life with my new husband, too.
Standing at 17.1, the only thing bigger than his body was his personality. He was a clown! Anything he could get in his mouth, went in his mouth. The last few years, he got night time turnout in the arena because of some of his issues. He often rearranged things, ate things, pooped on things, and broke things. He loved people, and attention, hated the farrier (sorry, Blaine!) and looooved treats of any kind. This one would eat anything….. except supplements, which for many years I had to mix flavored jello powder in to his morning feed with his supplements to get him to eat them.
This horse challenged me in many ways. He forced me to grow as a rider, as a trainer, and in my personal life. I’ve made lifelong friends, and found my husband and have my baby son because of this horses influence on my life.
I will miss him for a lifetime. I will include a few photos in the post from our 13 years together. Thank you all for all the love and support you’ve shown me. If you have a favorite Elliot photo, I’d love to see it in the comments.
