The Story of Bosco

Bosco aka "Exclusive Mister" is a beautiful APHA horse that lived with us for about 6 years.He came to us fat,aggressive, and unmanageable. When he was a weanling he was sold at a production sale for a little over $10,000. From what I was able to find out he was bought as a future herd sire/halter horse. His first owners took their breeding program in a different direction. This left a beautiful 2 yo colt to be sold to the highest bidder for $1500. That is when "Bosco" came to Ga. The new owners were inexperienced horse people who were going to train Bosco themselves in their free time. They put him in my husbands family cow pasture and promptly forgot about him. As Bosco got older he became a handfull. With nothing to do but chase cows and eat grass he became aggressive. He would come at people in the pasture.Not being horse people my husbands family made things worse by striking back at him. It was a game to Bosco but very dangerous to the humans as he was now a good 16 hands. The last straw was when Bosco was attacking a cow that was down and then came after one of the uncles. They caught him and put him in a barn. He was fed in the barn the cheapest high protein sweet feed available with some hay and water occassionally. How he didn't founder or colic I don't know. He escaped one day and ended up in our pasture. The uncles were going to shoot him and the owners couldn't do anything with him so he was given to me. I Ended up with a 16 hand, beautiful, aggressive stallion still wearing a halter that was to small for him in my pasture.

I started tryng to gain his trust so we could remove the halter that probably hadn't been off in years. It had started to deform his nose. I knew how dangerous a stallion could be so I was careful and went slowly. I finally was able to cut off the halter and get a new one on and off of him with no problem. His aggression was less with room to run and a proper diet. He was still a nipper so you couldn't turn your back on him. It was obvious if we were going to get him gentled he was going to have to be gelded and go to a trainer. We backed a stock trailer to gate wondering how we were going to load him without someone getting hurt. I went into the pasture and my husband opened the stock trailer. I left the pasture gate opened because the trailer was blocking the gate. Bosco began dancing around and acting up. I was about to give up when low and behold he loaded himself on the trailer and stood there ready to go. We backed the trailer to a box stall at the trainers facility and poured poor Bosco off of the trailer into the stall. Let the rodeo begin.

The trainer started Bosco and as we all figured he was a handful. He was now 6 yo and still a stallion. We had a Vet out to see about gelding him and found out he was a true cryptorchid. What that means is that one testicle is retained within the abdominal cavity. It also means his testosterone is higher due to the fact it is always kept warm which explained his aggressive behavior. It also means a normally cheap easy vet procedure cannot be done. We had to schedule with the local veterinary college to have the testicle laproscopically removed so instead of costing $150 it cost $1500 dollars.This was on top of the $500 dollars a month I was spending for board and training. Oh well its only money and poor old Bosco deserved a break after all he had been through.

It took Bosco a while to recover from his years of testosterone overdose but he turned out to be a really nice horse. He spent 2yrs with the trainer before I brought him home. He was happy to be out of a stall and turned out to pasture with other horses.

We rode him in a few shows and on trails around the farm. He will go anywhere and do anything.(He doesn't like to get his feet wet). We ran out of time to ride him and I hated to waste all of the training we had paid for. I tried to get a lesson program started at the farm so he could be use along with my other fat sassy horses. But my instructor has such a busy life it was hard to keep things going. So we made the hard decision to find Bosco another home . He is now with a family who loves him and who I hope will take good care of him. We miss you Bosco.