|
Dorothy's Shetland Ponies Pampered pony fulfills lifetime dream Surgery saves Shetland for championship These pictures and story appeared in the Daily Journal, Sunday August 28, 2005, Region Section
Dorothy Marth of rural Bourbonnais, IL works her Shetland stallion Frosty at John Oder's rural Martinton stable. Dorothy says she'll be working until she's 90 to pay for the nearly $5,000 operation that saved Frosty's life. He repaid her in part earlier this month by being judged "2005 Shetland Harness Pony Stake Champion" at the 2005 Illinois State Fare in his only competition since his surgery. The story is part of Dorothy's lifelong love affair with horses that had its inspiration in an Illinois State Fair horse show she didn't see in 1940, when she was 8.
Dorothy Marth bought Knight's Frosty Lee the same way she fell in love with the horse show culture nearly 60 years earlier -- sight unseen. In 1940, when she was eight, Dorothy traveled from Peoria to Springfield for what "was a very special family outing for only one day," her daughter, Beth Fuqua of Joliet wrote to The Daily Journal. They were going to the Society Horse Show. "I remember getting up so early and being so excited," Dorothy said. "That was the big night, the championship. We couldn't get tickets or my father couldn't afford them, I don't know which. I remember standing outside the Coliseum and I couldn't see the horses, but I remember seeing the girls with their derby hats riding by and we looked at the stalls all decorated and I just fell in love. "That was a big time that I'll never forget, but we couldn't afford horses." As her daughter wrote, "a dream was born" that day in 1940 and "65 years later, that little girl's dream came true." Dorothy Marth's Frosty was named "2005 Shetland Harness Pony Stake Champion," at the Illinois State Fair show earlier this month. Endangered dream It very nearly didn't happen. For Frosty's sake, it's probably good that Dorothy didn't see him before she bought him in 1997 on the advice of her trainer, Bob Roudebush of Thorntown, Ind. "When I did see him, I thought: That's the ugliest pony I've ever seen in my life.," she said -- a harsh appraisal of what is now a sleek, handsome stallion. "Then, when I saw him move, I knew why Mr. Roudebush wanted him... He steps so high... It's elegant the way he moves," she said ".... He's the only one I've got that trots that well." Frosty's also been very lucky Dorothy came into his life. In '98, Roudebush died and Dorothy had trainer John Oder of rural Martinton bring her other ponies home to rural Bourbonnais, where she and her husband Weldon have lived since 1963 on the edge of Kankakee River State Park. She wasn't sure she could handle the young stallion, so she left him with Oder, where Frosty is still stabled and trained. This year, he nearly died. He developed colic -- an intestinal blockage; excruciatingly fatal if not removed. "It's my biggest fear with horses," Dorothy said. "John noticed it in the late afternoon and called the vet, who was at the race track. He got here about midnight and said there was nothing he could do... He said take him to the University of Illinois for surgery." The UI veterinary surgeons gave only 60 percent odds for Frosty to survive surgery. "They said I should put him down... and in about 2 seconds I was supposed to make up my mind... I was crying so hard that my husband said go ahead and do the surgery. "They took out probably three or four foot of intestines and sewed him back together. "Overnight, he became a very expensive pony." The surgery cost nearly $5,000. "I'll be paying or that for a while, but I love him and he was worth it," said Dorothy, who works part-time at Koerner Aviation. "I'll just be working until I'm 90, that's all." The 'horrible disease' That's just part of the price of the love of horses, which Dorothy jokingly calls "a horrible disease... Once you catch it, you never get over it." The state fair championship "was tremendous" for Dorothy and Frosty, said Oder, who had 15 horses in the show for himself and other owners. He keeps 40 horses at his stable, a dozen of them his own. "Dorothy is just a super lady," he said. "She's like the ideal grandmother or mother type... "He's a super pony. He's done a lot of winning, but we nearly lost him. For him to come back as strong as he has is tremendous. The judge said he had never seen him any better." Dorothy had decided this would be essentially a year of recuperation for Frosty. "I said I was going to let him get well and show him at only one show and I did and he came through for me," she said. Getting him well was difficult. "Frosty could only eat very limited amounts of food at a time and had to be fed many times per day in small quantities," her daughter wrote. He "had to be exercised in very particular ways. Anything and everything around him represented danger -- chewing or swallowing the wrong thing could have meant a death certificate." Sweethearts, partners Dorothy and Weldon have been partners in the horse business since before they were married in 1955.Dorothy's father, Keldon Herron, moved her family to Kankakee in 1949, when she was a junior in high school. She and Weldon met in the church choir. They became sweethearts and, after she graduated from high school, they bought a horse together -- a saddlebred colt named Herkimer. Weldon and her father showed Herkimer at the State Fair "because he was too much horse for me," she said, "but he didn't do as well as Frosty." After they married they went to France together for a year. Weldon was stationed there in the Army. When she flew to Paris to join him, Dorothy was an instant celebrity as the first inter-continental air passenger to fly out of the new O'Hare International Airport -- Oct. 29, 1955 (18 hours Chicago-Detroit-New York-Nova Scotia-Ireland-Paris.) Young at heart Marriage and three children slowed things down a lot with the horses, but the "horrible disease" reasserted itself. First she had pleasure horses, then got into miniatures and Shetlands with Roudebush in 1995. Now she's got four ponies at home. "I just play with them at home and feed them," she said, "and clean stalls." She keeps five Shetlands at Oder's, including three sired by Frosty, who is now 10 years old. That's relatively young. "The nice thing about ponies, too, is they mature much later than the bigger horses," said Dorothy. "A lot of ponies are still showing when they're 18 years old. They're sound creatures. They don't get to be their best until they are older." Sometimes they live into their 30s. Maybe Dorothy's right about working until she's 90. "As long as I have ponies I will be working," she says. "They keep me young, I guess."
These pictures and story appeared in the Daily Journal, Sunday August 28, 2005, Region Section
|
