Nine Mile Falls woman reflects on her gentle, kind horse who was shot in the head on her property

Peggy Boyd said her horse, Clancy, was the “kindest, gentle soul,” and she knew he was the horse for her the second she put her foot in the stirrup and sat in the saddle on him less than a year ago.

Clancy was shot in the head earlier this month, and now the 67-year-old Nine Mile Falls woman is hoping to find the person responsible.

“I can’t believe this; this is just unreal,” Boyd said. “In my 67 years of life and having horses, I’ve never encountered anything like this in my life, ever, and I don’t know why anybody would do it.”

Boyd was out of town when her husband, Peter Boyd, found the 17-year-old registered paint horse lying dead the morning of June 5 along the fence line of their property in the 13800 block of North Dover Road, west of Nine Mile Falls.

It’s unclear whether the horse was shot accidentally or intentionally, according to Cpl. Mark Gregory, spokesman for the Spokane County Sheriff’s Office, which is investigating.

Peggy Boyd rode horses most of her life, but she quit riding before purchasing Clancy after a horse bucked her off. Once she climbed on him last August, that all changed.

She said she knows from the feeling of wrapping her legs around a horse and the animal’s response to her cues whether it’s the right animal for her.

“You just know when a horse is right for you if your personalities click, and our personalities clicked that very second I sat in that saddle and started walking around his little pen there, his arena,” Peggy Boyd said. “And it just felt good. And I looked at my husband, and he just shook his head, and he said he knew the horse was coming home because of the look on my face.”

She said Clancy made her feel very secure, and called him her “bombproof unicorn” and her “heart horse” because he was so gentle. For example, on her last ride with him, they encountered a rattlesnake on the ground. While some horses would jump and buck, Clancy was “gentle and kind” to sidestep the snake and keep them safe.

On June 5, Peggy Boyd said her husband went outside and called the horses to feed. They always come running up the field to the barn to eat, but only one of their horses responded that morning. Peter Boyd walked across their property and noticed their fence torn, a large pool of blood and Clancy dead on the ground.

She said they believe the horse was shot before he lunged through the fence and stumbled for a short distance, then died .

Peggy Boyd believes someone shot her horse intentionally. She said none of her neighbors heard a gunshot that morning, making her believe the gun was “silent and deadly.”

She said she was “devastated” and “brokenhearted” after learning her horse had died.

Accident or not, Peggy Boyd said she simply wants people to be responsible with their guns, and hopes this doesn’t happen to anyone else.

“I need people to know what can happen if someone is shooting and that bullet goes into other people’s property,” Peggy Boyd said. “It can kill a person, it can kill a dog; it killed my horse.”

Gregory said anyone with information about the shooting is asked to call Crime Check at (509) 456-2233.

Peggy Boyd said she hopes the shooter comes forward. She is offering a reward of at least $3,000 for information leading to the arrest of the person responsible.

“He was going to be my horse until I couldn’t ride anymore,” she said.