02/11/2025
Magic tried to come into the office one morning last week as I was taking my break halfway through cleaning the stalls. He pushed the door open and stuck his head inside as I sat at the counter, browsing around the NY Times website and enjoying a cup of coffee.
I said, “Dude, you are not sufficiently housebroken to come in here. I won’t have you knocking everything over and pooping on the leather couch.” Always a very personable horse, he didn’t argue; he just backed up and wandered off.
As a racehorse, Findhorn Magic ( Desert Classic—Proper Look, by Properantes ) had 25 starts, four wins, and nine finishes in the money. But he only won $22,470. Not a magical racing career.
He was foaled and raced in California, and when his racing days were over, he made his way to Virginia to start a new career as an eventing horse.
Eventing horses compete in three different disciplines: Dressage, which calls for graceful and precise movements, like ballet; Stadium Jumping, held in an arena where the horse jumps over tall fences; and Cross-Country Racing, an adrenaline rush wherein the horse and rider gallop over a turf course with insane obstacles the horse must jump over at a dead run. Eventing horses have to be very athletic, and Magic became a reasonably successful amateur eventer.
Equine athletes, like human athletes, lose a step as they age, and Magic was no different. But, like Dorian Gray, he seemed to stop aging at one point. For Magic, that point was when he came to us at the close of his eventing career and the launch of his lesson profession. It was so long ago that we aren’t sure which year -- our best guess is around 2008.
Magic Man, as he came to be called, was easy-going, professional, and dignified. He was everyone’s friend, and as the years sailed by, he kept his good looks! At 20, he looked like 15; at 25 he looked like 17, and when he hit 30, he still had good muscle tone, a solid top line, and a bounce in his step.
That all changed one morning last September when he came into the barn walking sideways. His back end was disconnected from his brain, and my first thought was that he had a stroke of some sort. He kept drooping over on one side and moved his body to catch himself, which resulted in him spinning around in circles.
We got him into his stall, but the spinning tore up the mats and caused him to dig holes in the base layer of gravel. It was a horrific situation. We worried that he would trip on the edge of a mat, break a leg, or simply fall and be unable to get up. I kept trying to fix the stall mats, and dig the shavings out from under them, but it was like shoveling s**t against the tide, and the poor horse couldn’t stop spinning. I tried pressing him against a wall to help his balance, but he wouldn’t stay there. Kim gave him banamine. We hoped against hope that he would regain his equilibrium. It went on for hours. Finally, he became exhausted and leaned against the wall. We were also exhausted and went to bed.
At about 5 am, I came down to the barn and found him laying motionless on the floor of his stall. Figuring he was done for, I pushed open the gate and went in to pay my last respects, but he heard me and raised his head, then struggled to his feet. This horse was not giving it up.
To make a long story a little bit shorter, it turned out he had a neurological parasitic disease called EPM. We put him on the drugs, and he got better. But he never fully reconnected his head and back legs, so turning him out in the fields with the other horses wasn't safe. That’s when Magic became a barn horse.
Did I mention that this old horse had no teeth? Well, that’s not exactly true because he had most of his front teeth, one molar on the lower left and one on the upper right. He mostly ate porridge and chopped timothy grass. He sucked on hay like an old redneck chews to***co.
Anyway, on the four days I cleaned stalls each week, I would open his stall door and let him come out and wander around. He was straight enough to stroll about the indoor ring for a few hours, poking his head into the stalls and hunting for a stray bit of grain or hay. That’s what he was up to when he stuck his head in the office door that day.
Well, the EPM, combined with an old habit of cribbing and a lack of teeth, caused him to have difficulties swallowing. Yesterday, he began choking. He was able to drink, and he was able to breathe ok, but there was hay stuck in his esophagus, and he couldn’t swallow food. The vet said we could trailer him to the University of North Carolina, and they could do surgery to remove the hay, but it would just happen again, so we made the hard decision to let him go. Magic Man was thirty-one years old. He will be missed for a long time.
Thanks to Val and Lainey Ashker and Bennett Camp Crowder, who brought Magic Man to us.
Revenues from boarding, training and lesson activities support the re-training, re-homing and long-term retirement care for horses, ponies and donkeys.
