Power of Hope
May 5, 1999 – August 25, 2024
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I came into this world in the spring of 1999, when the Maryland grass was just turning green and the air carried the sharp sweetness of new growth. My legs were long before I learned how to use them. My bloodlines were studied, my conformation admired, my future decided before I ever drew a full breath on my own terms. I was built for speed, and speed is what they asked of me.
The track was the first language I knew. I learned to respond to the snap of a whip, the tightening of reins, the way a rider’s weight shifted just before they asked me to give more. I earned $54,818 doing what I was bred to do—running until my lungs burned and my muscles shook. I was good at it. But being good at something and being seen for who you are—those are two very different things.

When my racing days ended, my usefulness didn’t. I carried foals. I stood in stalls and waited for hands that came with purpose but rarely with tenderness. Somewhere along the way, someone wrapped something hot and chemical around my hind legs—mercury blisters, they call it—and the searing left scars that circled my skin like bracelets I never asked to wear. I couldn’t understand the reason. I only understood that my body held memory long after the burning stopped, and that certain kinds of touch made me brace for pain even years later.

I moved through hands and properties the way a letter moves through a postal system—stamped, sorted, forwarded. I passed through New Holland Auction, where I was purchased by Rotz Livestock and tagged for slaughter. I was weighed like cargo. The air in those holding pens was thick with the breath of horses who did not know where they were going, and I was one of them. Fear had long since settled into the deepest part of my belly. It shaped the way I moved through the world—watchful, flinching, wanting closeness and distance in equal measure.

Then a woman named Lisa Hunt pulled me from that pipeline, and the road changed.

When the trailer opened at Unbridled Sanctuary, the air was different. Quieter. The barn smelled like clean hay and calm. No one rushed me. No one evaluated me for what I might produce. That first night, I met Heather—Special Heather, a California-bred mare who had traveled her own hard road from a slaughter lot in Bowie, Texas. We were born two days and two years apart. We had both known the track, both known the auction block, both known what it meant to be weighed and found expendable. Our noses met across the quarantine paddock, and something in me recognized her. By the next evening, our steps had fallen into rhythm, shoulder to shoulder, as though we had been rehearsing the pattern our whole lives.

Heather was the friend who did not need me to explain the parts of myself that startled or flinched. She understood the quiet language of shared endurance. With her beside me, my breathing softened. With her beside me, I could stand still without scanning for danger.

The days at Unbridled were measured differently than anywhere I had been. Feed arrived without competition. Hands moved slowly, asking rather than taking. There was a human named Alex whose presence felt steady and unhurried, who stood with me long enough for the tightness behind my eyes to ease. I discovered I liked the far corner of the pasture where the grass grew thickest. I discovered I would wait for Heather before walking anywhere new. I discovered that I could lean into a gentle scratch and close my eyes and simply breathe.

My body carried its history—the scars on my legs, the deep anxieties that surfaced without warning, the way certain sounds or movements could send me back to a place I thought I’d left behind. But here, no one asked me to be anything other than what I was. Here, my nervous edges were met with patience, not correction. The fear didn’t vanish. It loosened. And in the space that opened, something that felt like peace moved in.

I was laid to rest on August 25, 2024, with Heather beside me and the people who loved me close. My time at Unbridled was far too short, but it was the truest time I ever knew. I am Power of Hope, and I am more than the marks on my legs, more than a line in a sales catalog, more than a number on an auction tag. I am the mare who found her friend. I am the mare who learned, late in life, that gentleness was not a trick. And I remain—in the pasture I loved, in the friendship that steadied me, in the promise that once I was seen, I was never unseen.

•  •  •

At Unbridled, love does not end when breath does. It becomes legacy.​

​​Registered Name: Power Of Hope

Born in Maryland on May 5, 1999

Sired by Feel The Power Out of Katie's Alden by John Alden