It was so simple … offer up an opportunity to kids who are crazy over animals and something good was bound to come from it. Enter Hope Ellis-Ashburn, whose introduction to a spunky Arabian gelding at the age of sixteen, led her to write, “Always Hope: How Dairy Cows and Arabian Horses Inspired Grit in a Young Girl’s Life.”
The highlight of my 4-H Club experience was the opportunity to enter the 1987 4-H/ Middle Tennessee Arabian Horse Association (MTAHA) Gelding Give-Away Contest. One of the contest’s entry requirements was to submit an essay, “Why an Arabian Gelding Is the Horse to Own.” As a result of earning second place in the contest, I was awarded a oneyear lease on a purebred Arabian gelding who positively changed the course of everything. Faax El Din (Fakher El Hamal x Kimbrook Kameo by Al-Marah Count Rascal) was a flea-bitten grey and he stood just 14.2hh with shoes on. To anyone else, my prize may not have been described as desirable. After all, he was not of fashionable breeding and was 11 years old and only green broke. I called him “Faax” (Fox) and from the moment I met him, he spoke directly to my heart. I was just sixteen years old when Faax came into my life but already I had experience working with and had owned other breeds of horses.
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