IJADA
April 6, 1999 – March 12, 2024
Jade Hunter – Sidonia, by Seattle Slew
She was born in the bluegrass, in the spring, when the dogwoods bloom white along the fencelines of Versailles, Kentucky. Brookside Farm, April 6, 1999. A dark chestnut filly. Sidonia’s very first foal. She had no name yet—just blood and breath and the inheritance of champions. Her dam was a daughter of Seattle Slew. Her sire was Jade Hunter. Her breeder was Allen E. Paulson, the aerospace titan who had stood at the pinnacle of American racing as the owner of the great Cigar, winner of sixteen consecutive races and nearly ten million dollars. Mr. Paulson bred eighty-five stakes winners in his lifetime. This small, dark filly was one of the last lives he would bring into the world. He named her Ijada.
She was consigned to Keeneland’s September Yearling Sale after Mr. Paulson’s death, one of the first of his 225 horses to be dispersed. Lane’s End Farm represented her. The hammer fell at $67,000—Everest Stables the buyer. Ijada trained but never raced. She became a broodmare instead, producing four colts, three of whom became winners with combined earnings of $358,600. And then, as it goes for so many mares who have given everything asked of them, she was culled. In 2008, Everest Stable eliminated her from their band. Pregnant, she was shipped from the bluegrass fields of Kentucky to the uncertain confines of Louisiana. The descent had begun.
What followed is the story the industry does not want told. It is the silence between the auction ring and the kill floor. In Louisiana, Ijada ceased to be a granddaughter of Seattle Slew. She ceased to be the legacy of Allen Paulson. She became weight. Flesh priced by the pound.
In late October 2019, a kill broker purchased her at a livestock auction in the bayou. She was one of several Thoroughbred mares who had been discarded by a large breeding operation—horses whose names once appeared in sale catalogs and breeding registries now reduced to lot numbers on a broker’s ledger. They were shipped to a holding yard in Justin, Texas. The Lone Star Kill Pen published their identities. Individuals and rescues stepped forward for the younger, stronger mares. No one came for Ijada. Older. Smaller. Sickly. Wounded. She stood alone as the last Thoroughbred on the lot—and the first in line to be loaded for Mexico.
On November 4, 2019, Unbridled saved her life.
Through the generosity of Madeleine Paulson—the widow of Ijada’s breeder—and an army of compassionate advocates, we raised the funds to pull her from the slaughter pipeline. When she was picked up from that Texas holding pen, her coat was matted with manure and the muck caked on her legs concealed lacerations she had suffered in transit. A veterinary evaluation revealed a respiratory infection and a gaping wound on her left hock. She was broken in body. But not in spirit.
After months of quarantine, medication, and the quiet, patient labor of healing, Ijada arrived at Unbridled in New York in April 2020. And there, with an abundance of love and proper nourishment, she blossomed. Her gentle nature revealed itself—a sweetness of soul that had survived every cruelty the pipeline could inflict. She was no longer weight on a broker’s scale. She was Ijada again.
In 2021, now known tenderly as Jade, she captured the heart of Melodee James and moved into a new life at Mud Hollow Farm in Troy, New York. There, beside her companion Miss Minstrell, she became a teacher—proof that senior mares carry within them immeasurable light, life, and love to give. She had survived the auction block, the kill pen, the stockyard, and the long shadow of Mexico. She had come home.
On March 12, 2024, Ijada was laid to rest, her final breaths held in the arms of Melodee—who loved her, who chose her, who would not let her leave this world alone.
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In rescuing Ijada, Madeleine Paulson honored the memory of her late husband and the moral covenant between breeder and horse. Her act of grace became the seed of Unbridled’s Past Connections Project—a groundbreaking initiative that calls upon every individual who has ever touched a horse’s life to stand as guardian of that life, from first breath to last. Breeders. Owners. Trainers. Jockeys. Grooms. The ones who profited and the ones who simply passed through. The obligation does not expire.
Ijada’s story is not a fairy tale. It is an indictment and a redemption. It is the truth about what happens when the industry discards what it has used, and it is the testament of what becomes possible when even one person refuses to look away.
Her breath has ended. But her life at Unbridled became legacy. And legacy, unlike breath, does not die.