A story belonging to Meg, my true love.

Written by Moses D. Yoder, Edited by Meg Yoder

4010 words, a 20 minute read.

                I believe everyone should experience unconditional love, and our pets should also. Unconditional love does not reward a person or animal based only on their actions but loves them with a constant love in spite of their actions. That is not to say that unconditional love allows any action; sometimes discipline of the loved one is necessary. The difference is that conditional love punishes when expectations are not met; unconditional love disciplines to remove unhealthy behavior but never stops loving.

Everyone deserves a fair chance at the start. Unfortunately the little stallion was not blessed with such an opportunity. I am not sure where he came from but evidence shows he was brought into the world by a breeder that cared more about the money than the horse. Born somewhere in Shipshewana, Indiana. The Shipshewana auction is where you take horses to get rid of them when you don’t care what happens to them. There is never a shortage of animals because of the large Amish settlement in that area. The Amish believe animals are chattel and if they can’t work around the farm or be eaten then they have no value other than to be sold to the highest bidder. Many of the horses sold in Shipshewana are transported to Canada where they are stripped into their various parts for glue and meat. Such are the facts of life. This area is where the little stallion was born. He was born to a breeder who sold miniature horses for money without much care about what kind of home they were going into. As soon as the little stallion was weaned he was sold to a junk dealer near Three Rivers, Michigan.  I have little information of what happened during this time but somewhere along the line the little stallion learned to hate men. He didn’t mind women so much but he hated men. I don’t imagine any love was lost between the owner and the little stallion. Next, and I don’t know how it happened, Mrs. Bistodeau saw him and decided he would be perfect for pulling her little pony cart. Never mind the fact that he was completely wild now. They thought about various ways to get the little wild stallion home and decided on this plan. They would tie him onto a David Bradley walking tractor and walk him home with that.   It was about 3 miles to their property which they would have traversed in about an hour, the little stallion fighting the rope all the way there. His new home was a large field with enough food to live on, which happened to be next door to my in-laws 16 acre parcel. I am not sure how long he lived there. He was too wild for the owners to be able to do anything with him. At one time they wanted to put a halter on him to begin breaking him so the man grabbed a pallet and set it up about two feet from the barn wall. His son chased the little stallion into the chute formed by the pallet and they pinned him to the wall with the pallet by brute force. They got the halter on but I am not sure they ever caught him again.  

                We kept a horse at my in-laws, Dave & Mary Norwood. They had purchased a sixteen acre parcel with an old farmhouse and barn and they had 2 horses. A horse is an expensive proposition. The initial cost for our Leaguer was $2500.00. The former owners had paid $12,500 for her but they wanted to give her to us at a price we could (just barely) afford. She was very highly trained, a good horse to ride. Meg found that with home schooling 2 children and doing all the housework she rarely had time to ride and then you had to deduct inclement weather from that time, most of the winter, and other hobbies. If you figure in hay, farrier bills, worming, and misc., we were paying about $100 per month for something we used twice a year. Having a pet has its own value but Leaguer was not really a personable horse, like Meg’s horse Brandy had been. Meg liked Leaguer but never really grew close to her like she had been with some of her other horses. I never told Meg but the cost of the horse compared to its value bothered me a little and after talking it over with our pastor I simply prayed for a solution.

                We spend time at my in-laws occasionally and walk the paths on their property and it was there one evening that Meg saw the little stallion. She liked what she saw; a certain freedom, rebellion if you will, what you would see in a full size black stallion in the wild. He was black with a spot on his nose. His mane and tail were full of burrs. He was slightly undernourished but not too bad. She fell in love with him. We bought hay from the Bistitudes and their son Adam baled it and often helped us unload the hay. One afternoon after unloading a wagon of hay Meg asked Adam about the little stallion. He said she could probably have him if she wanted him, he was of no use to them. I wondered what she would do with him; for most men the things you spend money on have to be useful. She went to the neighbors and asked them about taking the little stallion. They thought it over and said she could have him for $300. After being told by their son that she could have him free, she was very disappointed. We gave up on owning him but she never really forgot the wild stallion.

                On September 12, 2009, a Saturday, about 10:00 pm we received a call from Meg’s mom. My in-laws had seen that the little stallion was loose and called their neighbors the Bistodeaus. The Bistodeaus replied that if we could catch him we could have him. They sounded a little sloshed when they talked to my mother-in-law and it was so late at night that we decided if the horse was still there in the morning we would try to catch it. That would give the neighbors time to change their mind. The next morning the little stallion had slipped through my in-laws electric fence somehow and was racing back and forth chasing the mares. He was in heaven now, three mares to himself, and chased them around the pasture in full regalia. Leaguer planted her hooves in his face and he slowed down a little but he kept at it until he was so tired he could barely breathe. That afternoon my in-laws set up an electric fence, called hot wire, so he could be separated from the mares. They chased him into it and he respected the fence. Dave, Moses’ father-in-law, built a small three sided shelter out of scrap wood for protection from the elements and Meg had her horsey.

Meg had plans for the little wild stallion. She knew he could be tamed with a simple two step process. The first step was to geld him and the second step was to love him. This is exactly the same process she used on Moses and it works wonders. She went out to see him every day for the next two weeks and soon made a decision. He was going to live in our back yard, and she was going to give Leaguer to a girl from our church. Here was the answer to my prayer, the perfect compromise. We would get rid of a very expensive horse and have a horse for Meg to love in our back yard. We own a half acre parcel outside of town and while the neighbors might complain and we would have to move the horse, we thought it was worth the risk. At the end of September Meg said good-bye to Leaguer and focused on her new little horsey.

                He was a miniature horse, different from a pony. He stands about 38” high at the withers, or 9.2 hands. He looks like a small version of the black stallion. There is an animated movie called “Treasure Planet” that has a small character in it which is similar to silly putty; it can morph into whatever it pleases and therefore it is called Morph. The wild little stallion had a spot on his nose about the size and shape of the little Morph in his natural state. Meg thought about what she wanted to name the little stallion and what she wanted him to become. She pictured his metamorphosis from the bedraggled and fearful wild little stallion into a loving and tame little horse with a flowing mane and tail and decided the name Morph would fit him well.  After naming him, she began her two step taming process.

The first step, gelding, proved to be a challenge. Meg called the vet, Dr. Lee, and set up an appointment for him to come out and geld him. Gelding is basically a removal of the testicles which eliminates most of the testosterone production in the male. Over time this makes them much calmer, plus they do not try to mate anymore (if they are gelded at an early age). The vet came out and Dr. Lee and Meg chased Morph all over his little pen and were unable to catch him. They gave up in frustration and the vet left. She called another vet and they said the little horse would need to be trailered to their office. Meg laughed hysterically. She called Dr. Lee again and they devised a plan. Meg would administer a dose of sedative half an hour before the vet got there, at which point Morph would be very docile and easy to handle. I remember that day well. The day before Meg was trepidatious about having to get close enough to Morph to stab him with a needle, and fear of what would happen when she did so. The time came and she managed to accomplish it with no incident. However ten minutes later Morph shook off his groggy state and began running around again. Meg saw that they were not going to be able to catch him again and called Dr. Lee to cancel. A new plan had to be devised.

The little stallion would have to be tamed some before gelding. To do this she would have to be able to get close to him and in order to do that he would need to be shut into a much smaller pen. We went to TSC and bought 4 corral panels twelve feet long. This formed a pen that was 12’ by 12’. One panel had a gate in it. We set these up around his little shelter and set up hot wire as a funnel to chase him into the enclosure. Four of us routed him through the gate into the little pen. The gate was chained shut, with a carabineer through the chain to lock it shut. Simply putting the chain through the hook on the gate isn’t enough; most horses can easily slip it open, and Morph is a master of the escape. Now he was enclosed in a small area and could be approached easily so he could learn to trust humans again. Meg started going out every day, usually with an apple or carrot. He would come over to get the treat and stand there and listen as she talked to him. All winter she went to see him every day, in the snow and ice. I didn’t mind paying for the gas; she was happy, in her element, working on the metamorphosis of Morph. At first he tolerated her and then looked forward to their little visits. He began whinnying in his eagerness to see her when she pulled in the drive.  He grew tamer that winter but never forgot his wild side.

We will depart Morph’s story for a little bit and interject a side note from Meg’s personal life. The Sunday morning before Memorial Day 2008 Meg’s husband, Moses, got up early which was normal but he departed from normal by sending an e-mail to the owner of the company he worked for. This e-mail made it quite clear that Moses was losing his mind. The management in the company tried to work with him but things gradually got worse that week until on Thursday Moses was sent to Elkhart General Hospital for a complete checkup and CAT scan. Nothing was found, so he was sent to Oaklawn, a mental treatment facility. I am not sure how other wives would react but Meg stuck by her husband. She brought him cashews and black licorice, two of his favorite things. Meg and her husband went through a long period where the doctors couldn’t give any explanations. A year and a half later, shortly before she got Morph, Moses was diagnosed Bi-polar. All the symptoms fell into place; some bi-polar people become psychotic when they are manic; Moses’ psychosis are harmless focusing mostly on religion or obsessing about ideas but when not medicated they become severe enough to be very scary.

The doctor put Moses on Depakote which was so expensive, $150 per month, that it was stressful for Meg and her husband and it also made him very lethargic. Moses kept pushing himself to work through the tired feeling but he gradually quit functioning as a husband and was not a very good worker. He talked to his wife once about quitting the medication and she told him that if he quit taking his meds he might as well move out. She had no desire to repeat the 2008 episode. Meg was working at Meijer at the time and normally had to work Sunday afternoons. One Sunday after church she went to work. Moses got a snack in the kitchen and noticed both sinks were piled high with dishes but he didn’t feel like washing dishes. Instead he pulled out his chess set and a chess book and spent the afternoon playing with the chess pieces. About 6 pm Meg came home and went into the kitchen and then came into the living room where Moses was playing chess. In the next few minutes Moses found out his wife was madder than he had ever seen her both before and after this incident. He didn’t realize it at the time but Meg’s job at Meijer was very stressful for her. Most of the customers treat the workers worse than slaves. Now she had come home from a wearing day at work, tired feet and her husband had spent the afternoon playing chess. It would only have taken an hour to wash the dishes and they would have been done when she got home. Later on Moses would learn to know that pleasant feeling of walking into a clean kitchen but now he had no clue. Meg was still furious the next morning.

Moses debated with himself all night and the next day at work. He knew he couldn’t keep taking the same medication. It made him too drowsy to function. Other people of course told him Depakote does not make you drowsy but how do you negate personal experience? That morning when the office opened he called his doctor and was told he could see her in about three weeks. No good. He went back to work. Shortly before noon he decided to go ask his parents if he could move in with them for a while. They agreed readily and Moses had a plan. He went home and when he got there called Meg. He asked what she was doing and she replied that she and the girls and her mom were on their way to do some shopping. He told her he was quitting his medication and moving out. He would find out later that they turned the car around as soon as possible, driving back home hopefully in time to talk her husband into a different tack. Moses had very little to pack however, a garbage bag full of clothes and he was out of the house in 10 minutes. It took a little longer for reality to set in.

Moses didn’t know it at the time, but his fate was tied to that of the little stallion. In Judges 6:36-40 in the Bible Gideon determines God’s will by putting out a fleece which he asks God to make the fleece wet and leave the ground dry, and God did. Gideon then reversed the test for a further sign, and that is where the phrase “putting out a fleece” comes from. Morph was Meg’s fleece. If she could turn Morph into a respectable gentleman just by giving him her love, that would be a sign to her that she could do the same for her husband. If things didn’t work out with Morph, Meg wasn’t going to waste any more time on Moses either. Meg’s father had offered to take in her and the girls, and she was fully capable of taking care of herself.

Soon after Moses moved out that spring Meg decided it was time to geld the little stallion. Dr. Lee came out again and gave him a shot of sedative. Morph still didn’t trust any man but he was loyal to Meg and Dr. Lee could easily get close enough to administer the sedative. One shot had no effect so he gave him another one. This started to show some effect but Morph still shied away from the vet. Dr. Lee administered the third shot. Morph, a 350 pound animal, now had enough sedative for a 900 pound horse. Slowly he went down, fighting with everything he had, but eventually he was unconscious. The vet did the deed, which is done without any stitches and left open to heal. As he was putting his tools back in his truck he told Meg that Morph would be out for about an hour. The vet pulled out of the drive and 10 minutes later Morph woke up and shook his head a little and got up on his feet. Morph had no idea of the plans in store for him.

Meg had wanted him in her back yard all along and she knew he would be sore for a day or two. Now was the time to move him. She called a friend with a horse trailer, Christy Freed, and made arrangements to meet at Meg’s parent’s place to pick up the horse the next day. Meg knew they would need some help and asked Christy’s son Jonathon to bring some of the boys from church. The next afternoon three boys showed up with the horse trailer. Meg went into his pen and put a halter and lead rope on Morph and was able to lead him to the trailer but of course he refused to go in. He didn’t realize what he was up against though. John Granger Jr. and Jonathon Freed took the lead rope while Meg and Ben Granger put their arms under his belly and simply lifted his back end off the ground and shoved him into the trailer. John and Jonathon escaped and the door was slammed shut. The trip to our house took about a half hour, going slowly to avoid shaking up the horse too bad. The trailer was backed into our drive and Meg positioned herself at the back of the trailer; the lead rope had been left on and she planned to grab it as soon as the door opened. When the trailer door opened Morph and Meg stood facing each other, he with an evil look in his eyes. She knew they were in trouble immediately; he had slipped off his halter and lead rope. Fortunately Moses and Meg had decided to embellish their front yard with a split rail fence and the trailer was backed into the one opening. Morph came flying off the trailer and went into the fenced area. He began running, checking the perimeter for an opening.

Two people stood in the opening so he wouldn’t escape the fence and two people went in to attempt to catch him. The top rail on the fence is only about 32 inches off the ground and normally Morph would have jumped right over it. Fortunately in his currents state, having been gelded the day before, he was too sore to jump. However he was not to be caught either. Eventually Meg decided just to open the gate to the back yard and funnel him into it. They had brought the corral panels from his original pen and these were set up around a small shed Moses had originally built as a play house for the girls and then had been used as a garden shed. Now it’s a horse shelter, a multipurpose building. Morph was chased into the back yard and the corral panels were set up around the shelter, the gate opened and work began on chasing Morph into his new home. This took a long time but eventually they were successful. Now the little gelding was peacefully lounging in his new shelter.

Meg bought grain and stored it in our utility room. She stored hay in the shed, along with some stuff she can’t get too now because of the hay. It was like a dream come true for Meg; she finally had a horse in her own back yard to love. They grew close that summer as she spent time with him every day. He learned to enjoy the time with her, getting his mane and tail brushed, getting baths, all the while with her soothing voice washing over him. He whinnies when the back door opens, expecting her to come out and talk to him. He gets let out of his shelter morning and evening to graze on the grass and his pen is cleaned out. Moses was expecting piles of horse manure all over the back yard but learned an interesting fact; a stallion will choose one spot for his bathroom and not go anywhere else. There is one spot for horse manure in his pen. He does make divits in the yard but they are not the type of people to care. He will roll sometimes, and goes galloping around the yard. Meg think he is blind in the right eye because he will run into trees when leading to the right; he almost always leads to the left. He plays with his companion Meg; they will stand off and stare at each other and when she begins to run at him he turns and takes off, rearing and bucking. When she turns and runs from him he chases her. Morning and evening he is fed half a flake of hay and a bowl of grain. She takes the grain out after letting him graze for a while and it is always a good feeling to see him follow her like a dog back into his shelter to get his grain.

Since things worked out with the little gelding Meg knew her relationship with Moses would work out also, and it has. Moses is on Lithium now which costs $4 per month and does not make Moses  lethargic, plus it is extremely effective. Moses washes the dishes regularly now. The relationship between Moses and Meg is probably better than it ever has been.

So the metamorphisis is complete. Partly from the removal of testosterone but mostly by showing Morph and Moses a human can be trusted, by being firm but not too harsh, always loving, a wild creature full of fear is turned into a handsome and respectable gentleman with a sense of humor.