Hoofprints across my heart...the beginning.

The day was January 21, 1981. Crisp, cold and bright. We'd been waiting all morning, my 3 year old twins and I . And suddenly, there he was in all his 18 month glory…a Morgan colt out of the famous Omar Sheriff, and straight from American Fork, Utah. He was the anonymous gift of untold people from Page, Arizona where Bill Murie (my late husband) was first stationed as a DPS patrolman 5 years earlier, before being fatally injured on Nov. 19^th, 1980 enroute the DPS academy where he was to be a counselor for the upcoming class. Probably one of the greatest ironies of this gift is that the young horse’s registered name was “Mary Mels Billy”…in truth!

So began the saga of 30 years…as he stood there, a huge red, white and blue bow wrapped around his neck, ready to frolic across the pasture kindly offered by my neighbor across the road from Pine Del (Flagstaff) where we now lived. Several months later, I was able to take Billy down to the Verde Valley to be professionally trained by Emery Henderson. When he returned a year later, he could have been a Brumby in Snowy River, so capable and sure-footed he was! He had been taught to drive (pull a cart). And, among many other feats, would even stand motionless while a chain-saw (without chain of course) was started and rubbed all over his legs. He was basically fool-proof. Emery told me “this horse will never kick” and he never did.

...to be continued