What Do You Do With a Slow, Old, Possibly Blind, Stubborn Horse?

If you are considering going on a long trek and buying a horse to save money on porter fees, I would recommend it. You have to be careful though, as not all horses are created equally. Here are a few things you want to avoid:

1. An old horse – Despite the obvious reasons for not buying an old horse (might be slow, can’t walk more than a few hours a day, horse arthritis*, etc) the main reason is you are also buying all the bad habits that have been going on for years! Our horse was allowed to set the pace for 9 years, and all of a sudden he has two Americans behind him trying to get him to go faster.

2. A Blind Horse – This one doesn’t really need to be explained. Horse that can’t see well + narrow cliffs a thousand feet up = not good.

3. A Stud – As a man, it is hard to say this, but unless the sole reason for the horse is to make babies, castration is the way to go. Our horse had always been a pack horse, but he secretly thought he was a stud and strove to make a change in profession.

Unfortunately, all of these things may have been true about our horse (we thought he was blind early on, but we aren’t so sure any more, maybe just farsighted). Despite all his inadequacies, he was with us for three weeks and walked carrying our load for well over a hundred hours. As the end of the trip drew near and we only had three days of walking back to the airport where we hoped the sell him, we thought our decision had really paid off. We thought we could sell the horse and save hundreds of dollars on paying people to carry our supplies. Well… 3 o’clock on day one of our three day descent he stopped and would not move. At all. We beat him (don’t worry P.E.T.A. not that hard), we yelled at him, we threw rocks (again P.E.T.A. not that hard), we pulled on his rope, we pled, begged, prayed, cried a little, tried to reason with him, but nothing worked. So we went to bed hoping he was just tired. Day two: Packed up ready to go at 6 a.m., and he won’t budge. So what do you do? Well, we wanted to take him out. Push him of a cliff? Knock a big boulder on his head? Anything (I have no excuse P.E.T.A. This horse was so bad you would have picked him off, too).
So what did we end up doing? Worse than killing him. We gave him away. The horse won. He was stubborn, and he got his way. We adversely affected another poor human’s life by giving him a horse named Lucky. I feel terrible.

* There may be nothing called horse arthritis.