Champion

7/29/00 - Yee Haw! This lovely gentleman has a new home and a new name! Special thanks to Mathew for saving a Champion! This is what Mathew has to tell us ......for today

Mission accomplished. Rescue successful. It was extremely hard and there were major problems. Our boy earned his new name. CHAMPION! I have been hard at work since three this morning and just in by nine to type this. I will tell the story tomorrow when I am not exhausted. Rest assured this horse has a home. And yes Gail I hugged him for you, and planted a big wet kiss on his nose! Mathew

Update 10-3-00 - We got some real cute pictures this week and had to send you this one. Champ is being ground tied in front of the stage here and working on his latest trick. Brushing things. We are trying to get a picture of him brushing another horse. I may even be able to teach him to paint. Notice that this fat happy horse is hardly recognizable as the horse posted on the T.I.E.R. site. This horse is perfect for this project. He has a minor limp after hard work that put him in harms way but for our purposes he is perfect. A jousting horse has to stand around in a pretty costume most of the time at a show. When it does perform it is to run a straight line for one hundred feet at most ten times , do a few spins maybe and with no more than a half hours work stand around in a pretty costume again. Training is much harder than performing in this sport. If I can teach this guy enough tricks he doesn't have to do much work and can still be a really effective posterboy for horse rescue. I am working with a local reporter for the new times on an article that is looking like a cover story. I will make the plight of the Standardbred my main subject and hopefully make my first P.R. contribution to the cause. I assume you don't mind that I gave the reporter the address of your web site.