Occasionally, Kings Bridge is asked by someone to assist in relocating their horse to a good home. Although we are not in the business of horse sales, we do have a lot of contacts with folks seeking a horse either through our adoption program, or, one who is available on the private market that we are aware of who would be affordable as a private purchase. Our approach is to simply put folks together and let them work out the details between themselves. Our efforts are purely to see that the horse continues to reside in a loving, humane home and receive good care. On a rare occasion we are asked to physically take the horse into our facility while working on a relocation home as is what happened in this story.
In September, 1997 at the close of live racing at the Great Barrington Fair in the Berkshire town of Great Barrington, MA, we were asked to take a wonderful 4 year old gelding to our facility for relocation. Not fast enough to make it as a successful race horse at any of the large racetracks, the Great Barrington Fair was his last stop. Having not done well there either, his owner/trainer, who was returning to Florida for the winter, did not want to further invest his time and money into the horse plus pay the cost of shipping the horse by van to Florida but desired a good home with a loving owner for this very sweet horse.
The young dark bay/black gelding who was racing fit and in excellent physical condition stayed at Kings Bridge only three weeks when offered a new home in Colchester, CT to become a project horse as a Hunter. We were very pleased with the extensive equestrian experience his new owners had from polo playing to show jumping and knew this would be the right place for Dark Star to blossom into the horse he had the potential to be. By the end of September, Dark Star was relocated to his new home where he spent the following Fall days with his new companion, Cosmo, a grey Quarterhorse gelding, grazing, socializing and eating carrots, apples and sugar which seemed much more to his liking!
Dark Star’s new owner, Cal, began working with Dark Star as soon as the winter weather broke and over the summer of 1998 not only had his show career begun in earnest when taking the blue ribbon in Green Hunter over Fences but Cal began to expose Dark Star to an entirely new world of pleasure riding experiences that included his introduction to swimming! We always are amazed at the beauty and tranquility of the photographs that Cal sends us of Dark Star. We hope you enjoy viewing them as well.
Dark Star is an active, robust horse in his new life and career. He has a great potential future as well. Deep in Connecticut horse country with very loving and caring owners, Dark Star has much going for him. We are very happy to have played a small part at a crossroad in his life
