Tally is a seven-year-old Andalusian mare. Her early years are unknown, but what is known is that around two years of age she landed at an auction in Texas that is purposely placed right next to the Mexican border. She was one step away from her life being ended, for when the horses at this auction don’t sell, the kill buyers step in, buy them, and pack them into their stock trailers and drive them across the border to the horse slaughter plants in Mexico. An organization called Horse Angels stepped in, though, and bought Tally. She then went up on their adoption website and some people decided to bring her to Maine.
Knowing her how I do now, I can picture her during that long ride to Maine. Scared, worried, braced against the unknown. She had no home within herself, and no home anywhere else. When she got to Maine she was untouchable and trembling with fear, a whole-body-tremble I would later see for myself. The people had a hard time with her and the call was made for her to go to the Maine State Society for the Protection of Animals.
She arrived there with no name. They called her Andy, short for Andalusian. It was Jaymee Rankin, the assistant barn manager there, that first cared for her and gave her the name Tally. I met Tally to do an evaluation of her for the MSSPA and there was a moment where she did something where I thought wow, I haven’t seen that or felt that in a horse other than Rocky. I had been feeling a new horse was coming into my life, and I knew they were going to be a mare, and that they’d be wild. But it felt farther away still, something I wasn’t ready for. But when Jaymee reached out to me later that year to say Tally was up for adoption… I knew right then. She was the mare.
Tally is the most beautifully sensitive and unique horse I’ve ever known. I’ve never met another horse even remotely like her. She is so deeply drawn to connect, just wanting to understand, get it right, and do what is asked and feel good. Her body tells the story of her early life with almost forty scars, one eye with very limited vision, many melanomas, bones showing old healings, and movement that shows that humans once tried to force her to move how they thought she should. Our work together asks me to bring out my best in a way where it’s becoming my new normal. She doesn’t understand physical pressure or rushing, taking, making, or forcing like it’s just not in her DNA. But she knows connection, though. She lives and breathes it.
Tally has now become so grounded, so trusting, and so willing. More than anything, she’s happy. Her expression is so present, so engaged, and playful even. Her body and its movement has remembered what it’s gloriously like to be a free horse. She nickers more than any horse I’ve met, and looks to connect with you like it’s her mission in this world.
Tally, the Firefly horse, a nickname my friend Nancy gave her that stuck. She’s found her home within herself and her home with humans. And it’s a place that will always give to her in the same beautiful way she gives to the world.