LD, Pt 2
I had Sloan Kay Gregory May 9th, 2023. All was good with her and I until it wasn’t. Shortly after giving birth I sent Grant to get me a coffee. It’s all I wanted (very on brand). When he got back everything was going much worse. I found myself no longer stable and hemorrhaging rapidly.. again.
For the second time in 2.5 years I lost over half my blood volume. This story isn’t really about how terrible I am at having children. This is about a horse. But it’s important to me to note at minimum that Sloan’s birth much like Clare’s did not go as a planned. It left me weak at best. In 2.5 years my body built two humans from scratch, lost enough blood to power a whole new person my size and kept me alive when the odds were I should have died.
June 4th my mom was there helping me with the girls. She gave me some time to check on mares and just enjoy some sun. I promptly went to the barn and rode for the first time since finding out about Sloan. I wanted to ride as much as I could between June 4th and June 18th. My father in law was having two cutting horse trainers come to work their 3 year olds for the coming futurity season. Zeb Corvin, his trainer and his long time friend, Johnny Mitchell. I would not be missing a moment of riding with talented people regardless of how I physically felt.
It’s not lost on me the privilege it is and was to get to just be near these people. Every person works like a well oiled machine. I love it. If Zeb has an extra horse I always try to ride one. I have been fortunate he lets me jump in. I don’t really know a ton about cutting but I enjoy watching and listening to people discuss the horses working. You learn a lot. Highly recommend it.
Johnny arrived first, he got horses settled with his team. He then came to enjoy my father in laws porch and chatted about the week to come. I sat on the porch listening to them dissect horse genetics, thoroughly enjoying myself. A bit later Zeb and his crew arrived and began to get their horses moved in. My father in law had left and I felt I had a moment. I could quietly ask if Johnny happened to remember my stud. I waited solely because it felt silly. I literally got this horse from a man I never met who could not articulate who had trained him. I only knew Johnny had owned him roughly when he would have been in training from a report from AQHA. But I had a window and I wanted to ask. So I did.
After some narrowing down which horse he in fact was, he began to describe him then described what he believed he injured in 2007. He very much remembered him. Then he paused and said, “That horse has my brand.” I was in disbelief. He in fact had 2 brands but it never occurred to me that the M on his hip may stand for “Mitchell”. He was so kind to me about him and he definitely didn’t have to be.
The next day, everyone was riding and working horses. Zeb let me lope a few horses so I was in the arena riding. Johnny was aboard Moms Lil Rebel, a bay stud, earner of $378ish THOUSAND, third place at the futurity the year prior… the real deal. As I rode by he laughed and said, “you can’t beat a bay stud with an M on the hip.” I laughed back and told him, “ I will take that one next.” Then he said one of the single most iconic things I have ever heard…” the M stands for Money, Mate.” I almost fell off my horse. Literally almost needed to step off and have a moment.
He owed me nothing, literally nothing at all. I would have happily took, “ sorry I don’t remember the stud from 15 years ago.” I expected nothing of it but it meant the world. To have someone take their time and just give you unsolicited kindness for no other reason than they can was something I desperately needed. I was struggling with feeling ok to ride, at all. I was literally getting dizzy when standing or exerting at all. I was feeling exhausted by my newest role, and feeling generally just not healthy. Then to have someone just be encouraging of your whimsical dreams just because he could.
I am aware, Lowdown Son of A Gun is probably just an unproven stud. I know I was fortunate to get him and it work out how it has. However, I also know the odds of: being given 7 wonderful mares from family friends, a horse like him being available after 10 months on Ranch World Ads of all things, someone training him I remotely knew, him getting here safely and being everything I was told, sitting on a porch with a man who rode him as a 3 year old 15 years prior, the trainer remembering him down to the tiny white sock on his hind leg, him being branded by a trainer I was riding side by side with, him successfully breeding my mares to create lives…. Odds of all of that are next to none.
The two most important things I garnered from this whole story are: when life gives you opportunity, take them. You don’t know where it will take you until you say yes, and most importantly when life hands you an opportunity to be kind, take it. You genuinely never know how badly someone could use kindness.
Lowdown Son of a Gun’s first foal was born May 5th in New Mexico at the Corazon Ranch.
