This funny little photo is one I used on stationery and I can't seem to make it any bigger. If I had another one, I'd use it - I'll never be able to get another one. This horse is Ballyteague, known in the barn as Teague. He was named after a town in Ireland where my great great grandfather lived and nicknamed after a very bright young man who was one of my students many years ago. I lost Teague last weekend. He died during a big storm. Apparently he was hit by lightening.

Teague's mother was Blue Dexsun, a Quarter Horse mare I bought from one of the bus drivers down at school many years ago. Dexsun had been in a severe car accident - she had survived the accident, the driver who hit her did not. She was a sweet mare, with a very large dent angling across her face as the only evidence of the car accident. I lost Dexsun while she was foaling about a dozen years ago. She and her foal are both buried in my yard at one end of my old riding ring. Now her son is buried at the opposite end in the lane behind the ring.

Teague was born dark, almost black, but gradually turned gray. His gray lightened as he got older and gradually he turned white, just like his mother. His father was a rich chestnut, my Quarter Horse stallion, Dan Bally. Danny's been gone for half a dozen years.

Teague had a bad accident as a two year old. He reared up to get away from the vet and fell backwards, banging his head so hard that his brain was damaged. He was always head shy, right up until this last year. He was never ridden and never became a brave horse, he spent most of his life in the pasture with his friend Manly, a black Quarter Horse. In recent months, he developed a habit of coming to me whenever I was in the barn and he let me rub his head and neck. Two of my friends buried him yesterday. I should be used to losing horses, but he wasn't as old as the rest, only in his mid twenties. I've worked hard to not cry, but I'm really going to miss him.