Cooper’s history
Cooper is proud that no one knows his full history. We only know Cooper from a few years ago that he showed up in a horse auction, and started working as a lesson horse in a big barn in Silver Spring, Maryland. He was there only for 4 months when I went to look at a different horse and there was Cooper sticking his big white face over the fence staring at me demanding to be looked at. The rest is history.
That was Spring 2004. We thought he was about 6 years old. Cooper moved into another big busy stable. He was known as the horse that would gallop around the herd and get everybody all riled up. He also had a habit of picking a fight (or play?) with the biggest horse he could find. I realized he had never known the likes of mundane things such as fly sprays or blankets or gentle handling. Nonetheless kids still liked him and a few clipped his mane for keepsakes when he had to leave a few months later. In late fall 2004 Cooper followed me to Elmira, New York. There we found his talent as an escape artist. To this day we still don’t know how some of those escapes were managed, and he is not telling! He always escaped to hang out with the biggest horse in that barn, and once allowed to share pasture, he was happy. (Cooper had his own opinion about things even back then.) He also got into dressage, and won a blue ribbon in his first show, later he would acquire several blues and reds. We also learned about his sense of humor. At one place where he was fed outside, he started throwing his food pail over the fence when he was done. It only took days before all the horses along that side of the fence were throwing their food pails over the fence! He did not like fly masks, and would take his, his pasture buddy’s, and the horses over the fence’s masks off. On several occasions Cooper was seen chasing another horse with his ball in his mouth swinging at them, we called that horseplay.
Cooper moved to Coopersburg, Pennsylvania just after the new year of 2008. He has been happy here ever since. He prefers to think of himself as kids’ favorite and the coolest looking horse in the barn. He is now mellow, but you can still see the mischievous glint in his eyes when he thinks nobody is looking. He has lots of stories to tell about his travels, and if you listened closely, he’d tell you a good one.
And that is Cooper’s history.
