I used to shareboard a 15.3+hh seal brown TB gelding, son of FAST PLAY and grendson to SEATTLE SLEW. Regestered name I'm A Player, barn name Player. He was an ex-racer rescue who was (despite quite royal lines) afraid of racing and just wanted to be a pet. He was sold to Iowa because he started misbeaving and the owner didn't want any trouble Here is his story from a part of a story I wrote about all of my past animals:
Well, his glory days are over, he needs your help.” And so I imagine were the words spoken to my riding instructor by Player’s trainer in the fall of 2003. “What glory days?” would have been my instructor’s reply, “You mean his foal days spent care free on the farm? They were over a long while ago.
The great, beautiful horse was free of charged, and inevitably doomed, so he came to stay at Wedgewood Farms Equestrian Center in Wheeling. My favorite Quarter Horse mare had just been transferred to the new facilities at the old Happy Trails place in Wauconda. I normally would have been upset, but Player caught my eye.
When I heard his story, I thought of Ferdinand, the unfortunate winner of the 1983 Kentucky Derby who ended up at a foreign slaughterhouse. I took care of Player two days a week and eventually shared to boarding costs on him with his owner and rode him three times a week. My instructor and Player’s owner graciously taught me how to teach him. How to be loved, how to be a pet, and how to be ridden. He loved to jump and so did I, even though we both were novice. He slowly became my next emotional investment, I unconsciously told myself in the back of my head that I would buy him when I would get a job to pay for him. One day my instructor told me I was the first person other than Donna, his owner and herself that Player was being sold to Krystal, the girl who rode him on Tuesdays and Wednesdays, and they were looking for a share-boarder. Sine I had already share-boarded hi, they all thought I was the obvious first choice. I was in shock, my mind was numb, but I climbed up and rode him like I have never before and since ridden a horse, to show I can connect with this horse. I knew, Wauconda was forty-five minutes away and Krystal was moving there to be closer to him. I knew my parents weren’t going to drive me there and back three days a week while the other watched the other two children in our family. I panicked and announced to a full car that we would be needing to go to the new place. They replied in sweet tones, “Ok, we’ll try Saturdays to see if it will work out.”
“ No,” I said again, “We really need to go. “ They again replied,
“That’s fine, we can try that.” I kept repeating the same thing over and over again until I was angry with them,
“No, they’re selling Player and they want a share-boarder!”
“Oh, honey, I don’t think that’s going to work out, but we’ll…” It all faded as I laid back onto the back bench of the mini van and cried into the fuzzy grey upholstery. When I started to feel carsick I sat up and asked where we were going because I was disoriented. My answer made me lay back down and cry.
“It’s really hot so we’re all going to Dairy Queen, do you want a Blizzard? You can have anything you want.”
“No, “ I said, “I don’t know what I want.”
I tried to order a raspberry Mr. Freezee, but I guess I ordered a blue raspberry freezee. I mixed in the ice cream and played with it. Guess I looked really funny because some girls sitting at a small table adjacent to us looked at me and snickered. This might seem like a little over reacting, but remember I had already gone through two of those life-altering mishappenings before and knew what was probably in store.
Player was moved to Wauconda along with the rest of the horses in the very end of July, 2004. It was happily worked out that I would pay a girl to drive me to the barn and then back home at the end of the day on Saturdays and ride Player for Krystal. I was quite relieved and this time had to cry happy tears, I was wrong. I returned from two consecutive one-week vacations to a different Player. He, being a “baby” was very upset in this change of schedule and started having “temper tantrums” He would bolt on a regular basis, kick more often, bite a lot more, buck at random, and now fiercely protected his food. (All claimed by Krystal) I wasn’t aloud to ride him at all, she wasn’t allowed to buy him, and pretty soon he was isolated to the farthest stall. One day Krystal came and told me he was tailored off to “somewhere in Iowa last month” and I was right then and there felling very different then you would expect; I was happy for him. Here he was lonely, bored and depressed. There he would interact with other people and horses and once he was settled it, be (I thought) very happy there, wherever it he is.

not the best pic, but I never really got any good ones of him.
His head looks so ugly in this one!