I wrote, several months ago, about my horse and the need to sell her.
Eventually I did and bought a good horse for my son. We have been riding her pretty regularly. About two months ago, we began looking for another horse so we could all ride together.
After an exhaustive, multi-state search, I found a mare I liked in my price range. She is a lightly flea-bitten grey. As she sheds out her winter coat, the grey is getting much lighter. She has a grey, black and white mane and tail that are very pretty. She is a bit small and isn’t my ideal horse, but she does help create the desired versatility in the barn, so she has that.
What she didn’t have, was a name.
The woman we bought her from got her at an auction. Her registered name is Grey Lady’s Twilight. The woman didn’t know much about her past and didn’t name her. The woman’s children referred to her as Grey or Snowball, but she didn’t really have a name.
That left the naming to me.
(As a quick side note, I don’t like changing an animal’s name once they have one. Sometimes, like this case, it can’t he helped, but I think once an animal has a name, it has a name.)
So, I needed to find a name.
I gave the first crack at a name to my 4-year-old, Levi, who recently started riding. Levi’s suggestion was Horsey-horse Horse Horse. I told him I was not giving the horse that name. My 6-year-old son, Ben, always the smart-alec, knows my feeling on naming animals so he encourages Levi to be as creative as he can in suggesting ridiculous names.
The horse’s lineage has some nods to royalty and to the sky.
So, I made some suggestions to help the tot:
Grey- as she is grey and that is part of her actual name, but we already have a horse that used to be called Grey and a cat that is named Grey.
Lady- a mare’s name and part of her actual name, but I don’t like that name.
Lady Bligh- merges Lady and royalty. I thought it would be funny to name her after a rot-gut rum, but my wife did not!
Snowball – what the children of her former owner referred to her as.
Elsa- she looks like an ice queen and it kind of merges the Snowball idea
Stormy- because she has the color of a stormy sky.
Smokey- because she was the color of smoke, but more of a boy’s name.
Given all those options, Levi came up with another.
“I know. Let’s call her ‘Jesus!’” he said.
My 6-year-old, knew this would not be acceptable and immediately jumped on the band wagon.
“It is the name above all names,” Ben chimed in with a smirk.
At some point Levi asked why he was naming the horse. I explained that I expected this to eventually be his horse. He explained that he was taking my wife’s horse and she could ride the new horse or any horse she wanted, except his new horse/her old horse. His logic can be dizzying at times.
Thursday morning the former owner sent a text. She was taking the horse for a check-up and the vet wanted to know the animal’s name. In my panic, I typed the only thing I could think of.
So, Lady it is, joining Kati, Maggie, Minnie and Penny. At least it’s not Horsey-horse horse Horse… or worse.
-Mac Cordell is a reporter for the Journal-Tribune.