Vista Farms

RIP Starfire and Smokey

 

    Our love and support go out to both Mandy and Beck.  Losing a horse that you have loved and has given you years of his life is like losing any family member.  There is no way to describe the grieving that you go through.

    Mandy has had Starfire since she was about 7 or 8 yrs old.  Before that, he was one of Arlene and Keith Allred's stallions.  (Most of you know that Starfire is the sire of Deek.)

    I met Mandy right around that time, when I came over to work at Vista Farms around 1990.  She was just the tiniest, prettiest little girl ever.  Starfire raised her, and not without trials and tribulations.  Mandy and Starfire won about everything they could win.  Those of you that are familiar with the Siddoway family winning most of the high point awards at every show, every year, may not know that the Allreds were the Siddoways of their time.

    Mandy and her cousins, Eric and Melissa Allred, swept the high points every year for at least a decade.  All of the Allred kids rode western, hunter and did showmanship at haler.  They wiped out the competition for about a decade.  (FYI: Before the Allreds, it was the Rinos!)

    Kelcie Beck started riding here taking lessons when she was 8 or 9 years old.  I think Candice was her instructor.  She was also a student in the Summer Apprenticeship Program.  She met Smokey when she was about....13?  (I think...)  He was a semi-rescue horse that was caught up in the middle of a divorce.  He was a big, naughty boy a lot, and God bless him, this is how Beck learned to become such a talented horse woman.  She rode him through their many storms together, and got that sometimes-very-stubborn-and-snotty gray horse to become the champion that he was...right up to the end.

When we got Smokey, the owner supposedly had paperwork on him.  The more we got into it, the less papers we got.  The woman, in fact, ended up in prison for embezzlement (!?!) and Beck never did get the papers on Smokey.  Even though we knew he was a registered half-Arabian/Thoroughbred, the papers were never given to Kelcie.  She and her mom even pursed them through the prison system and into the state of Texas!  But, even so, Kelcie always loved him just the same.

    Several quality people offered to buy Smokey over the years, and offered good money too.  But, Kelcie never had any intention of parting with him.

    Kelcie and Mandy both had to make that final decision to help their life-long fiends rest peacefully with no more suffering.  Smokey, with a bizarre tumor, and Starfire, with complications of old age.  But, I know you will agree with me when I say that both horses could never have had a better life, than with these girls.  They were both very lucky boys.

 

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