Soft Heart Rescues Thoroughbred From Hard Times

When she was 17, Emily Paulson saddled herself with a scraggly, scrawny thoroughbred heading for the auction block and most likely the cannery.

The horse was covered with infected cuts and scrapes.

Paulson decided to buy him anyway, scraping together $450 by holding a garage sale and saving her money.

Paulson loved him. She named him Bobby McGee.

“It was just the dirtiest horse,” she said. “I found Bob just as skinny as can be. Everyone thought I was crazy.”

Especially her parents.

“When we first saw him, we thought, ‘How big a hole are we going to have to dig to bury him?”’ said Steve Paulson, Emily’s father. “He looked rough.”

Paulson’s now 20, and Bobby McGee is 27. He’s still skinny.

McGee’s ribs poke through his sides, and a saddle doesn’t sit well on his sunken back. But the cuts are healed, and the horse has gained weight since being kept at Paulson’s friends’ stables a half-mile north of Strong Road on Indian Trail.

Someone apparently didn’t have much horse sense.

Paulson was reported by a passing driver to SpokAnimal for cruelty to animals.

“It hurt a little bit,” Steve Paulson said. “But it’s good to know there are people watching out there.”

“More than making you mad, it just kind of made you sick to think about how much work Em’s put in,” added her mother, Sande Paulson.

SpokAnimal is required to respond to any complaint of cruelty. An investigator checks out any complaint, and if the owner isn’t around, leaves a door tag for the owner to call, said Gail Mackie, executive director at SpokAnimal.

“We’re charged by the city of Spokane with protecting animals,” she said.

Emily Paulson carted her photo album of McGee to the office and showed off her pictures of how the horse had improved. She wasn’t ticketed.

She spends time every day with Bobby McGee and with Tyam, a horse given to her by friends eight months ago.

Paulson has a soft spot for her first horse. Her license plate is framed by a holder reading, “Thoroughbred: Lovin’ Bobby McGee.”

“I wouldn’t trade him for anything,” she said. “Bobby gives me so much warmth, better than a boyfriend.”

Paulson also takes classes at Spokane Falls Community College and works at Loomis Armored Car. Eventually she’d like to own a farm where her horses could run, and maybe any unwanted horses, too.

“They’re good animals,” Paulson said. “I hate seeing them go to dog food.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo