By Eric Lidji
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Published September 10, 2007

“I love what you’ve done with your chaps, but they’re on backward, darling,” Kerri Mullis said to the young girl who came to the farm for riding lessons. “Third time’s a charm.”

The two walk down a bumpy trail, past the quiet mugs of old horses, until they reach Mariah, who seems preoccupied with the bundle of hay at her feet. Mullis and the girl, a 7-year-old named Adara Wyman, lead Mariah back to the stable, where they pull dirt from her coat and strap on her saddle just a tad bit loose, the way she likes it.

Mariah is pushing 16 years old, which is getting up there for a horse, but still makes her one of the youngest at Movin’ Free Farm. In a few years, Mariah will start losing teeth, making it hard to eat the copious amounts of hay she needs to stay healthy. Without warm, soft beet pulp in her bowl, she’ll stop eating altogether and just waste away.

Some farms would give these old horses away, or put them down, but Mullis prefers horses approaching seniority. She believes these old horses are the best on the planet for teaching children how to ride.

Older horses have the right temperament for riding lessons. They don’t mind the repetition or the slower pace required to teach a young child to balance.

But they also impart much larger skills like empathy and respect, Mullis said, because it takes more work to care for an older horse, just like it takes more work to care for an older person. These old horses need to be dried off better in the winter, watched over as they eat and, occasionally, they need a bathroom break at inopportune times.

“I think that the kids really learn that the older horses are special,” Mullis said.

Mullis grew up loving horses in Texas, but followed her first husband to Alaska 16 years ago.

“That didn’t last, but the farm did,” she said.

Now she runs the farm with her husband, Dave, who runs K Bar D Apparel Co. right next to the farm on Lawlor Road.

When Mullis bought Movin’ Free back in 1993, Mariah was just a “snotty” young horse on the farm. The previous owner sold Mariah, then called Turtle, and Mullis didn’t think much about it until a local veterinarian called seven months later requesting help. Mariah had lost a large amount of weight and developed a string of ulcers from her throat to her stomach. She spent her days lying on the ground thrashing about, near death.

But recovery mellowed Mariah.

Now she can intuit the comfort-level of the small children on her back.

When Wyman, who has been riding for two years, took a rare spill at practice, Mariah came to a complete halt and waited for the girl to get back in the saddle before moving again. A younger horse would take off running if the rider fell, but even when practice resumed, Mariah moved cautiously, refraining from the random cantering she occasionally takes to out of excitement. Mullis calls these old horse “bomb-proof” because nothing shakes them.

They have seen too much to get worried about small things.

Many of the 44 horses Mullis keeps on her 14-acre farm came to her from unfortunate circumstances: owners that lost interest or couldn’t figure out how to feed the persnickety old horses, or were just plain cruel. The oldest horse on the farm, a 34-year-old white Icelandic pony named Misty, was found lying in a puddle of her own urine. It can take years to break the bad habits accumulated through that lifestyle.

“We retrain them and we use them in the lessons,” Mullis said.

The children, mostly young girls, who come to practice at the farm often form deep attachments with the horses. Many girls who first started riding in kindergarten are now graduating high school, but still come out to the farm several days a week to work and help out. Occasionally the bond is exceptionally, like the recent bond forged between a horse named Lady Bug and a young girl suffering from Cystic Fibrosis. In those cases, Mullis feels the need to nurture that attachment.

“Many times I will take a horse and give it to one of my kids,” Mullis said.