On Thursday in Part 7 of this excerpt from the new book Equine ER,
Marching Orders, the stoic Thoroughbred with the big heart, died on the operating table because of complications from a portion of his small colon being trapped inside a diaphragmatic hernia. Today, we find out what happened when the inmate whose life the horse transformed, and who was intending to adopt him, found out about Marching Orders' sudden death.
On the last weekend in March, former inmate Chris Huckleby got word his sister had been killed in a car wreck in Texas. One week later, he got a phone call at work from the head of the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation that Marching Orders had died. The foundation knew what the horse had meant to Huckleby. After he was told what happened, it was as if the sun had been painted out of the sky. About three days after that, the wife of the couple who had donated the horse to Blackburn brought Marching Orders’ halter to Huckleby, knowing he would want it. He says on that day, life became overwhelming.
The paddock where Marching Orders once grazed.
Depression and drinking followed and within a week or so, Huckleby violated his parole by going out of state to Wisconsin, for family reasons, he says. As a result, he ended up back in jail, first at the Fayette County Detention Center in Lexington, in a cell where where he dreamed about Marching Orders at night. Shortly afterward, he was transferred to various facilities, and ultimately ended up in a minimum-security prison southeast of Louisville, where he was released in summer 2009. (This story took place during 2008.)
Huckleby’s downward trajectory had a flickering spot. One day after he got the call about Marching Orders’ death, his daughter’s mother called and said she’d permit him to see the child for the first time since 2004. He felt like somehow the horse had helped him get to that point.
“The horse loved me with everything in him,” says Huckleby. “He trusted me. It gave me a lot of confidence. … I wasn’t loved a lot as a kid. I’ve been loved more by a horse than anything in my life, it’s sad to say, besides my kids. He was everything to me at the time.”
Thursday: A video featuring former inmate Chris Huckleby and the story of Marching Orders.
Equine ER just returned from the Kentucky Book Fair! We are so happy to announce we sold lots of books and met many horse lovers. We also recently got a letter from reader Jackie Betts. She wrote of Equine ER: "I found myself swept up in the
day-to-day, sometimes minute-to-minute drama of this group of dedicated
[vets] ... [the book shows] their private moments of fatigue and doubt
and tears; all of this information is accessible and captivating." To
order Equine ER, click here. 
