top of page

Molly

General

Breed: Standardbred

Age: 10 yrs old

Weight: ~1000lbs

Height: 15.2 hh

Color: Bay

More Specific

Shoes: Barefoot

Grain: Enrich

Meds: Elevate

Supplements: Outlast, Cosequin

Gaits: Walk/Trot/Canter

If you are looking for a sassy little mare who loves to explore, look no further!

 

Miss Molly is a 10 yr old, Off the Track Standardbred who wasn’t so great at the whole racing thing, so her family retired her from the track and we scooped her up!

 

Luckily, her previous family stopped racing her before she broke down or had a severe injury, so we’ve been working on turning her into a trail horse, which she enjoys MUCH more than she ever liked being on the track. 

 

She’s been with us for a little under 2 years now and we’ve learned a lot about this girl during that time. 

 

If you are interested in learning all the things that have been going on with Molly, then keep reading after the next two paragraphs, but if you just want to know what kind of home we’re looking to place Molly in without any of the history, then you only have to check out the next couple paragraphs and you can skip the play by play that’s below them.

 

The first type of home is someone who’s looking for a companion horse who they can occasionally get on and take out for a no-stress trail ride. Molly’s been turned out with mares and geldings and does well with both of them, but is typically towards the top of the hierarchy, so she can be a bit aggressive at the gate while they’re getting their places figured out. 

 

The second type of home is one who wants her for a riding horse and understands that in order for that to happen, she is going to need a good chunk of vet work and diagnostics to figure out what is causing a hind-end lameness that fluctuates in severity . We think she’ll be 100% worth it, once it’s figured out, because when she’s at her best she’s an absolute dream to ride, we are just unfortunately limited in what we’re able to do to figure it out. 

 

What we do know for sure is that the first and most obvious thing about Molly is that she has what we lovingly call ‘resting mare face’ (which is very similar to RBF, but we have kids visiting often, so we can’t call it that!) but she doesn’t mean it, her ears just naturally flop backwards, making her look much grumpier than she actually is. What she is instead, is a total sweetheart who just wants to make her humans happy. 

 

She also does what we call ‘Lip poppies’ almost all the time, whether she’s just chilling, waiting for food, or working! You can check out her tag on our social media (#waywardmolly) to see what we’re talking about since there are a good chunk of videos showcasing them. 

 

When Molly first came to us, she was making fantastic strides in her undersaddle work, quickly progressing from walk to trot and even to cantering (although that still needed work) and when she was adopted in July of ‘23 to an older woman who just wanted to play around with her and go out on trail rides, we were ecstatic! Unfortunately, the barn she was being boarded at didn’t appreciate or understand her backwards ears and from what we were told, they started going after her and treating her aggressively, making her become more headshy than she has ever been and she began flying back into her stall if she was hanging her head out and someone walked by. This unfortunately led to an accident where she bumped into her adopter and knocked her to the ground, breaking her leg. 

 

Molly came back to us in October of ‘23, and the mare who returned to us was not the same confident horse we had adopted out. 

 

In addition to being headshy, she had lost a lot of the confidence that had made her such an exceptional horse in the first place, and some of her resting mare face had turned into real grumpiness, so the first few months we focused on getting her confidence back and showing her that we weren’t going to punish her just for being herself. 

 

As we went into winter, we weren’t able to ride her super consistently, but noticed that she wasn’t the same as she had been when she left and we began the search to find out what exactly was going on with her. 

 

Then she slipped and fell on her way in from the field one morning and the off-ness was exaggerated, but luckily our vet was already scheduled to come out in a few days, so she got some bute for a few days and some time off. Then when our vet came she got checked over and we started figuring out a game plan.

 

First we had our vet do some chiropractic adjustments and when that didn’t make a big difference we tested her for Lyme, which came back positive, so she went on a round of treatment, in addition to doing the chiro adjustments regularly which helped and it felt like we were going in the right direction. 

 

Shortly after that, someone came to see Molly who unfortunately couldn’t sit her trot (which is a more forward trot, typical for standardbreds, but can be a bit much until you get used to it) and she came off, which as far as we know had been the first time anyone fell off Molly. 

 

And after that, Molly got progressively more ring sour and started throwing bucks when asked for anything more than a walk. She also has an intermittent hind end lameness that we’re trying to figure out the cause of. 

 

The good news is that even when she’s been at her absolute worst in either of the rings, the second she realizes she’s going out on a trail, her whole personality shifts and the happy-to-be-ridden horse is back and it’s like all the bitterness in the ring never happened. 

 

She loves to go out on a trail and doesn’t care if she’s with another horse or completely on her own (with the exception of one yell to her friends as we’re heading away, but it’s more of a ‘I’ll be back in a while’ yell rather than a concerned one). And she’ll happily stay out there as long as you want. One day I let her wander wherever she wanted, picking her own path and just exploring. We were out there for a solid hour and I had to be the one to turn her back to the barn, she would have been perfectly happy staying out for even longer. But once she knew we were going home she was happy to and didn’t fight to stay out in the field or anything like that. 

 

She is also absolutely bomb-proof on the trail and doesn’t let ANYTHING bother her. Multiple times we’ve had birds take off right under her and once we even had a deer jump up from about 3 inches away from us, and not once did she do more than a single step to the side and usually I’m the one who jumps more than she does. We’ve also had a coyote appear a few feet away from us and run away and all she did was look at it. 

 

Because of all these things, there are two very distinct types of homes we’re open to placing Molly in

 

The first is the person who’s just looking for a companion horse they can take out for a no stress trail ride. Someone who isn’t looking to do anything serious with her and wants her to mostly be a pet rather than a riding horse, and is okay with her being a bit off out on trails.

 

Then the second is a home where the person wants her for a riding horse, but understands that there’s going to be a significant amount of working with a vet to figure out what’s going on with her and what’s causing on-again-off-again lameness and if that’s related to the ring sourness/bucking or if they’re two separate things completely. Then, once that’s figured out, they’re also willing to put in the training she’ll need to keep progressing. 

 

I know all of that sounds a bit overwhelming (and if you stuck with me through this whole essay, than thank you) but Molly is a really cool horse who, when she’s feeling good, will give 110% to do what you’re asking and is a mare you’d never have to worry about doing stupid things that end up with you stranded on a trail and walking your way back on your own two feet. 

 

If you are interested in a sweetheart pretending to be a grump as either a companion or as a trail horse, click below and fill out an application for Miss Molly! Or, if you have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out!

We are grateful to have had several wonderful photographers donate their time and skill to photograph our animals and their lives here. While many photos on our site were taken by WRAS Staff Members, others were taken by:

Tischman Pets Photography, @tischmanpets, gmt-photo.com

Mike Barr, @mikebarrphotography, www.mike-barr.com

Thunder Ridge Images, www.thunderridgeimages.com

Mark Liflander, @liflanderphotography

bottom of page