Vineyridge
From AlexBrownRacing
Contents |
Bio
I live in the Mississippi Delta, the armpit of America, and I'm, well, elderly. My name is Jane Heidelberg. I grew up here, on the cotton farm that I still live on, and got my first horse when I was seven or eight. When you live miles from the next nearest children, you spend lots of your time with your animals, and I've always loved horses, dogs and cats. My pony and I would spend hours together, day or night, under saddle or bareback, just riding the turnrows. They were some of the happiest times I've ever had.
When I was a teenager, I moved to Memphis for high school. I was so horse mad at that time that my nickname was "Horse", and I didn't even care. In truth, I was flattered. By some fantastic luck, I was given the opportunity to foxhunt and Pony Club and show during those years, and loved every minute that I was on a horse.
But, like so many young people, when I left for college, horses were left behind. I did college and law school, found labor law and arbitration, and spent quite a few years following that dream on the East Coast. After a crushing time in NYC, I skulked home to Mississippi to start all over again. I worked at a local law firm and cared for my aging parents until both died in the space of a year. That was followed by a long and very major depression, during which I learned that I had been bipolar all my life.
Since then, I have devoted most of my energy to keeping myself stable with medication, therapy, and caring for the dogs and horses that have found their way into my life since my parents' deaths. It's been a long time, and there have been lots of them who share or have shared my home. I am able to keep horses in an old mule pasture on the farm, and I'm lucky enough to have a ramshackle old house to live in rent free. I own very little and consider my animals my companions and friends, not my possessions.
In answer to one of the questions below, I never saw Damascus run. I'd have loved to. He was a very special race horse and sire. The last living US sire line from Teddy that I know of.
Wavy Navy is from a very strong line of French jumping horses, originally begun by a horse in the 1800's named Dollar. Dollar is the sire line for both Bonne Cause, the matriarch of the Bonne Nuit family that populated the great USET Teams of the 1950s and 1960s; Quarantaine, the matriarch of the Battleship line of Steeplechasers; and Ksar/Tourbillon, the sire line of a large number of international GP jumpers and eventers.
If anyone would like to discuss TB lines for sport, it's my hobby and current research subject.
Horse experience
In 1998, after my parents died and I was so lonely, some friends who were even older than I told me about starting into horses for the first time at their age and how happy it had made them. I remembered how caring for horses had been so very satisfying as a child and teenager and started thinking about getting back into the saddle. One day, while surfing the internet, I found a gray TB mare who had been posted by the founder of TIER. She was in a feedlot in California, and I fell in love at long distance. Gail helped me buy her and get her here to Mississippi, where I boarded her at my friends' barn. Our story is still on the TIER website, here: http://www.tierrescue.org/Ibbie.htm (Notice we have the same color hair!)
After Ibbie died, I was heartbroken, but I knew I'd never want to be horseless again. A few months later, Duncan was offered to me. He was a 16 yo, arthritic, sometimes lame after hard work, OTTB, who was classically beautiful, lived at the barn where Ibbie had started out, and had the most wonderful ears you can imagine. He was beautifully trained, and I would be a "light" riding home for him. So I bought him, and he is now twenty four, living in my pasture, completely retired, and totally adored. He is grumpy, opinionated, and spoiled rotten. He has a home with me for as long as he has a decent quality of life, and 24 really isn't that old these days. He's been a stud muffin gelding all his life, and his current girlfriend is a 24 year old Appaloosa/QH mare who is mostly deaf and blind. She had lived in our pasture for twelve years, and when her owner made noises about sending her to auction, I begged him to let me take over her care. Duncan is her eyes and ears, and they are inseparable.
In February, 2005, when Duncan needed to completely retire from riding duty, I saw a CANTER trainer ad that said the horse "had to be gone by Wednesday." The mare was a big, orange sprinter, and I bought her sight unseen. Thanks to her track experience, she was brainfried when I got her, and she exploded my rotator cuff by bucking me off the first and only time I ever tried to ride her. She was also, I found out, permanently and irremediably lame. I managed to find her a home as a broodmare, but her lameness got so bad she was put down before she was able to have her foal. I still grieve for her and for what bad trainers and bad owners did to her at a very low end track. She was one of those horses that racing chewed up and spat out with no chance for another life. She was six when she was put down.
Then in November of 2005, I bought my two weanling TB babies at auction for a grand total of $775. Got a filly and a colt by the same sire. The colt is Bud, the one with the broken jaw. I've raised them, loved them, trained them to be good equine citizens, and have (I think) got the sweetest pair of 2 1/2 year olds you'll ever meet. The filly will probably end up around 16.1, but I'll be lucky if Bud makes 15.2. Of course, that just means there isn't quite so far to fall. Neither has been started under saddle yet, but that is next summer's project.
They are both plain bay, but other than that they are nothing alike except in sweetness. Bud takes after his mother's (the Roberto) side of the family, while the filly takes after HER mother. Bud is a pocket pony, while the filly is brave and bold and afraid of almost nothing. They are my hearts, and I hope they will also be my riding horses.
In a bit of back story, I fell in love with Thoroughbreds in my first incarnation as a horse person. I still believe they are among the most beautiful of all God's creatures. I remember watching racing on television back in the 1950's, and the first TB that showed me the very special heart of these wonderful animals was a racer called Tim Tam, who won the Ky. Derby and the Preakness, and finished second in the Belmont on a broken sesamoid. He was determined to make it to the finish line and limped home only a broken bone from being a Triple Crown winner. I've never forgotten how wonderful he was.
Then, in 1967, I saw one of the greatest races of all times in person. It was the Suburban Handicap with Buckpasser, one of the most beautiful and greatest of thoroughbreds of the 20th Century. Eight yards from the wire, he was two full lengths behind Ring Twice. He found another gear, lengthened his stride, dropped like a low rider car, and won that race by 1/2 a length. In all my years, I've never seen another performance like that or another horse so determined to win.
When horse racing is right, it is poetry in motion: beauty, heart, determination, drive, all put together in 2 minutes. It's not just man making a dumb animal do something the horse doesn't want to do; the soul of a great horse is born into a body that loves to run and prove how special he is in that herd on that day by winning.
FOB activities
The only formal rescues I've supported in the past have been TIER and the Chesapeake Bay Retriever rescue. I am, however, sort of my own rescue here. In the Mississippi Delta, there just aren't very many formal rescues, so often animals are dumped on my farm and find their way to my home. Or people want to get rid of some animal that I happen to know personally. I bring them into my life, feed and care for them, and give them a place to live for the rest of their lives. For dogs, I've even paid for heartworm treatment, along with everything else. I've never owned an animal that wasn't some sort of unwanted creature. Because of this, my discretionary funds are strictly budgeted and limited, especially since I'm retired and living on a fixed income which is relatively comfortable in normal circumstances for a single, animal loving, person with a St. Francis complex. All my animals get the best possible feed and care--but Bud's jaw is just beyond my resources at this point.
I'm always available to donate time or a place to stay for an animal in need, and that's been my relationship with the Chessie folks in Atlanta. And I'd do it for the FOBs, but the Mississippi Delta is way off the beaten track.
FOB Network
Can't say that I know any FOBs to network with other than Dr. Ohlinger at Finger Lakes, and some that I've met through COTH. I'm always vineyridge on horse boards. There might be a bunch of people in internet communities who know who I am and how I stand on rescue issues.
Questions from other FOBs
This this space available for FOBs to ask you questions. Answers can then be worked into the above content if appropriate.
I wish I could have seen Buckpasser race!!! You are one lucky gal! Does it also mean that you might have actually seen DAMASCUS run??? He is one of my all time favorites (have one of his grandsons, the same horse has Buckpasser in 3rd gen. on dam's side...) Noticed your comments about Wavy Navy (on the Barbara-thread), what else do you know about her? You said the jumping genes might come from her... swedishkat
