Gibson, the Gentle Giant

Gibson, My Dream Horse

Finding and meeting my dream horse:

I have always been a horse-crazy girl. My last horse passed away in 2009 (of old age) and I had always told my friends and family that once our youngest child left for college, I would get another horse. When my daughter was about to graduate high school, I started saying that I would be looking for my next dream horse. I wanted a large horse, not too old or young, good on trail, with a mellow and kind temperament. I started looking at pictures of what my dream horse might look like. My family is of Basque descent and I continued to be drawn to the large Spanish and French horses with their thick necks, long manes, and kind eyes.

Then my friend sent me a post she had seen on social media about a horse looking for a new home. He was large (a Percheron draft horse), 15 years old (perfect age), so he seemed to fit the bill. By the way, I found out later that Percherons are French horses! I called the phone number on the post. When the owner called, we hit it off right away, shared about our children and their aspirations, and then talked about this incredible horse. She loved him, and parting with him would be difficult, but she felt I might be the right home. When I shared about the community where I lived, she said that she thought perhaps Gibson had lived somewhere similar before, but she wasn’t sure exactly where he had come from in Orange County. She had been calling the horse by a different name, but she said that his given name was Gibson.

So the weekend after my daughter graduated high school, my husband and I drove out in 114 degree heat to Palm Springs to meet the horse of my dreams. Gibson, a 17-hand, beautiful black gelding, with kind eyes, and giant hooves the size of dinner plates came to meet me at the fence. He was perfect, large, well-mannered, honest, and bomb-proof. We got acquainted while I fed him carrots and apples, brushed him and picked his feet. When I asked him to do a little work at the walk and trot on the lunge line, he obliged without a fuss. I needed to ensure I could ride him, so we saddled up next. When I put my English saddle on him, it looked like a child’s toy saddle, and my longest girth wouldn’t fit around his belly, so we saddled him up using a dusty western saddle because we could adjust the cinch to fit around his enormous middle. I hadn’t ridden in several years, so it was a leap of faith when I stepped into the stirrup to climb up on his back. Just then, the mounting block tipped on the uneven ground, and I slipped down, landing hard on the grass next to him… and he didn’t even budge! On the second try, I managed to get up into the saddle, and we meandered around the pasture together. He was the perfect gentleman, and I was smitten.

The owner could tell that I was already falling in love with Gibson. She agreed that we were a good match and she said that he could be mine. Then she generously gave me all the tack, buckets, and blankets I could fit in our car. My heart was even more full than our car driving home that day!

My husband and I went out to our community stable that evening to choose a stall for Gibson. We usually have to do a fair amount of work to make the stall “move-in ready,” so we wanted to get to work immediately. The barn manager approached and asked us what kind of horse we planned to bring in. “A big one” was my nervous response, not knowing how she would feel about me bringing a giant 1,650 lb. horse into the barn. “What breed,” she asked. “Percheron” was my reply. “What color,” she asked. “Black” was my reply. Then she said, “we used to have a black Percheron living here in our stable; his name was Gibson.” “This horse’s name is Gibson!” I told her excitedly. After we talked for some time, we came to find out that Gibson had lived in our same community barn and had left from there to go to the Palm Springs area. She even showed me a video of him on her phone from 3 years earlier and said that many of the horses and people at the barn would remember him fondly as the gentle giant with a mini horse companion. I called the owner that night to tell her the news that Gibson was “coming home” to the same barn that he had left 3 years prior, and she cried happy tears with me because we both knew that it was a match made in heaven. My dream horse had literally been right under my nose at the barn that I drove by daily, but I had never met him. I thanked God because only he could have sent Gibson on a 3-year vacation and then connected me to him through 4 horse-loving people over social media so that he would be ready to come back home at the exact time that I would be ready for my dream horse.

We came back with a borrowed truck and trailer to pick him up the next weekend, and we enjoyed a lovely few summer months together riding the trails in our area.

A terrible bout of colic:

Then in August 2022, we had a heat wave in Southern California that lasted for 3 solid weeks. One Friday evening I got a call that Gibson wasn’t eating and hadn’t pooped all day. He was bloated, gassy, restless, and uncomfortable. I called the vet out to do a field treatment for colic, and he felt better for about a week, but by the following Friday, he was feeling uncomfortable again. After a second Friday night vet call and treatment, we decided to take him on Saturday to the horse hospital nearby for evaluation and treatment. The unthinkable happened: he had a displaced colon and needed emergency colic surgery to save his life. Gibson survived the 2 hour abdominal surgery, and his prognosis was good. His belly bandage was HUGE! He stayed at the hospital for 11 days and then came home.

When I visited Gibson daily at the horse hospital, he would whinny a greeting when I arrived and whinny again when I left. I groomed, walked, petted, and talked to him. Our family worried and prayed and cried. My husband joked that my “free horse” had the dubious honor of being the most expensive pet we have ever owned and that is saying something. 

More bad news:

After another week at home, Gibson felt uncomfortable again, so the vet came out and did field treatment for colic again. We headed back to the horse hospital when the symptoms didn’t completely subside. It turned out that Gibson had a stomach impaction, a clump of undigested food lodged on the roof of his very large stomach, and he needed more treatment and daily scoping of his stomach to try to dislodge it. Another week and a half at the hospital later we were told that he had a neurological issue of the smooth muscle lining his esophagus and stomach that causes food to move through more slowly (like Lou Gerrig’s disease in humans). We also discovered that he has a diverticula (a pouch or fold in the lining of the stomach) that acts like a magnet that attracts and traps food particles. The vet told me that there is no treatment but assured me that both these things could be managed with care and a special diet.

A Happy Ending:

Gibson has made a full recovery and has returned home. He is currently doing well on his modified diet of 25 pounds of alfalfa leaves per day. His vet and hospital bills ended up being in excess of $20,000, because medication and treatment is based upon body weight and my gentle giant weighs the same as a horse and a half! Thank you for your support of Gibson, my dream horse!