Leonor's Horse
A beloved story told to me by grandmother Leonor.
Her father, my great grandfather, Pedro Ramirez (I recently learned his first name), when hunting in the forests near Zacatecas, heard an almost human scream. He found a horse being attacked by wolves. He frightened the wolves away. The horse was bleeding and screaming so he spared it from suffering. He saw movement still in the dead horse’s belly. He took out his knife and removed a foal. It was pure white. It was about the size of a dog.
It started breathing.
He put the foal in his coat against his body and rode back home. They fed it and kept it warm. When it looked like it was going to survive, they gave to my grandmother, who was about 10, the job of taking care of the animal.
It stayed small for a long time and lived in the house. It followed my grandmother around and behaved like a dog. It slept in her room. She would sneak food to him from the dinner table. When it was no longer practical to keep it in the house, my grandmother and her father made a comfortable human-like apartment for it in the barn.
It was always a very tame and gentle horse. Then it grew to be a very large white stallion. It never needed to be broken to be ridden.
30 years later, when my mom took my dad to meet her family after they were married, my dad also heard the story of this famous horse from relatives. He saw descendants of the big white stallion and he said they were all unusually strong and beautiful.
I love this story.