Lightning (Royal Thunder)
We received a young stallion in for training named Othello the son of Royal Thunder and Chesterfield’s Lucy Lou. Othello’s owner promptly changed his name to Thunder, because she didn’t like the name Othello. Thunder was a very nice colt with a very personable easy going attitude.
Not long after Thunder came in training, his father (Royal Thunder), who was owned by a different person named Jean came into training for manners, driving and among other things, we were told that he needed to learn the word Quit, and that he had bitten Jean at least three times, and had broken Jean’s wrist.
We gave Royal Thunder a barn name in order to distinguish him from his son. Since Lightning comes before Thunder, we figured that it would be appropriate to call him Lightning instead.
Lightning was being boarded at a stallion barn in eastern Washington where his only occupation at that time was breeding mares.
Jean (his owner) requested that we pick him up from there and haul him over to our barn.
When he got here he was extremely obese, so much so that he couldn’t easily lay down or roll and when worked lightly he would breathe so heavily that he sounded like a freight train.
When we started training him he was rather obnoxious and all he wanted to do was either drag us down the isle to the horses in the stalls, or when he thought that he was in trouble race backwards down the isle (habits that he had learned from improper handling at the breeding farm) training was very slow with him at the start as he had very little willingness to learn or cooperate with us at all, besides all the bad habits that he had to overcome.
One day Joe, who was the person training Lightning, decided to turn Lightning out in the arena for a little free time to enjoy himself a little bit, ( we had giant animal grade soccer balls out in the arena that the horses like to play with, especially a Morgan stallion named Alydar, Alydar loved chasing the balls round and round the arena for fun) anyway instead of going out there and having fun he saw the soccer balls and began attacking the balls and acting like he was trying to kill them. That was the first time that we had seen Lightning show those kind of tendencies.
Lightning had been in training approximately about 1 month and Joe had him in the arena and was working with him, and there was also another horse in the arena at the far end named Jericho who was being held, Jericho broke loose from his handler and ran near Lightning, whereupon Lightning launched himself at Jericho with his mouth gaping open trying to attack him like he had done to the soccer ball, however Joe had previously put the training collar on Lightning’s forehead for control as he would listen to nothing else. Lightning was almost able to knock Jericho down but Joe barely managed to stop him by zapping him with the collar on the forehead. So we began working with Lightning around other horses more to get him to stop attacking them, we did manage to get him to the point where we could tightly sandwich Lightning between Jericho and his son Thunder, however he had to be watched very closely all the time.
Lightning also had a habit of showing his frustration in his stall when he saw other horses by ramming backwards with his rear into the back of his stall and bashing the boards out. So to remedy that we rigged up a hot wire in the back of his stall so that every time that he would ram his rear into the back wall he would hit the wire, he quit ramming his rear into the wall, and instead began slamming his body onto the sides of the stall, and he also began turning around and challenging the hot wire by threatening to bite it and lifting his front legs up at it and shaking them at the hot wire, like he would really like to tear that hot wire to bits.
Joe was still making slow progress with Lightning, he was now driving him and had ridden him a couple of times at liberty, but his aggression and shows of frustration in his stall were still quite a challenge.
One day Jeanie was mixing the horse feed and she saw John pushing a wheelbarrow out of Lightning’s stall, and all of the sudden a very peculiar expression crossed John’s face, and then he disappeared backwards the fastest that I had ever seen him go backwards, then I heard a bunch of banging and thumping around going on in the stall. I didn’t realize it at the time, but what had happened was that John was pushing his wheelbarrow out of Lightning’s stall and Lightning was coming up quickly behind him in an aggressive manner and John told him to back off and gave a kick at him while he was in the process of pushing the wheelbarrow out of the stall and Lightning dodged the kick and launched and John and bit him on the rump and proceeded to drag John into the stall by his rear. As John was being drug into the stall he managed to grab his scoop shovel that he had been using to clean the stall out with and began whacking Lightning’s nose as Lightning was trying to stomp and strike John while he still had John by his rear and he was shaking John and trying to smear him on the ground. That was the first time that he had attacked one of us. John was to embarrassed to tell us how badly he had actually been bitten until much later.
Then on the 8th of December we had an auction scheduled for horses at our barn. And Lightning became quite frustrated during the whole auction and received more attention from the crowd because of his antics in his stall than did the horses in the auction. He was repeatedly body slamming the walls, rearing, weightlifting (holding his front legs up and shaking them) ringing his neck, screaming at the horses and challenging the bars of his stall. After the horses left he began to settle back down a little bit.
The next day Dec-9-12 at the evening feeding, I, Jeanie was going into his stall with his grain, and Lightning was being a little pushier that night than usual, so I waved my hand and him to shoo him away and told him to back off, whereupon he started bouncing at me side ways, and a very peculiar look crossed his face, one which I had only seen one time previously when I had been attacked by a young quarter horse gelding, he began tracking me with his eyes and triangulating me, at that point I decided to evacuate the stall in a hurry, so I quickly backed out of the stall and just as I stepped out of the stall he launched up in the air with his mouth gaping wide open aiming for my head and neck trying to attack me, I yelled at him and slammed the door shut in his face just in the nick of time, God was definitely looking after me.
The next day Monday Dec-10-12, Joe took Lightning out that evening to work him, and Joe had him in the isle way grooming him, Lightning started to nicker to a horse and Joe told him to quit, whereupon Lightning swung his head around and gave Joe the same look that he had given me the previous evening, and I said “Joe be careful, he is looking at you funny like he did me the other night when he tried to attack me” and Joe said “yeah I know”, and I said “no I mean it, be careful” and I went and got the cattle prod and I said “you might want this”, so Joe took the cattle prod.
I then went and got Thunder out and began working him in the arena. When Joe was done grooming Lightning Joe began to lead him down the isle as usual to expose himn to other horse for the purpose of teaching him manners and proper horse social skills, he walked him down the back isle and was coming around back to the front isle again, when I heard Lightning starting to snort and nicker to some of the horses in the stalls, I heard Joe tell him to quit, and then I saw Lightning’s head whip around and look at Joe and launch in the air at Joe, then I saw Joe go down and he called out for help in a very strange voice, which I only remember Joe doing once before when he fell out of a tree from way high up. I flew off of Thunder and yelled out “Joe” as I was running over to Joe. I saw Lightning with Joe’s arm in his mouth trying to stomp Joe and scraping him violently across the floor smashing him on stuff with his eyes all red and fixated on Joe, I felt so helpless as I ran over there because Lightning had Joe in such a vice grip and was in such a rage that no amount of my feeble punching kicking or bashing would do anything to help. I looked for something that that I could use as a weapon but saw nothing that would work, Joe was fighting and growling for all that he was worth, and Lightning was stomping, thrashing and growling himself trying to kill Joe. When I got there I grabbed Joe to try and pull him out from under Lightings feet and began pulling while Lightning was pulling the other way, then Dad and Mom ran around the corner and at the same time Lightning got his feet caught in a portable saddle rack which knocked him off balance so that he left go of Joe and went tripping about 15 or more feet down the isle way trying to get loose from the saddle rack. Joe got up with his hat all askew and began walking over to Lightning to do something, he wasn’t quite sure what to do he was on an adrenaline high at the moment, and then he tried to move his arm and realized that it didn’t work very well, and then the pain came. We asked Joe “are you okay...?” and he looked at his arm and then started cradling it, and we said let’s see your arm, whereupon Joe stepped back and said “no” in alarm as we started walking forward to look at his arm. So Mom said let’s go in the tack room, at this point Joe’s face was going white as he was in a bit of shock. Once in the tack room we began carefully removing Joe’s carhart jacket, a north face fleece jacket and his flannel shirt, when we were finally able to see his arm we could see almost every single detail of Lightning’s teeth marks, right down to the fine intricate squiggles of his teeth because he had bitten Joe so hard.
His arm began to swell, but the bone did not appear to be broken, although Joe could not use his arm. His back also was pretty rough looking too where Lightning had been smearing him on the ground so hard. Then John said that his rear had looked like Joe’s arm when Lightning had bitten him, and when Mom asked him why he didn’t tell her that it was so bad, he said it was because he was too embarrassed.
Jesus Christ is who stopped Lightning from killing Joe, because nothing in our power could have stopped Lightning, it is hard to remember a time when I felt more helpless than I did right at that moment when I saw Joe in his mouth and Lightning in such a rage that he could not be reached.
The next day Jean (she didn’t know what had happened at this time) called and said she was going to stop by to see her horse and talk to us. When she came we told her about what Lightning had done.
Then Jean then told us the details of the time that Lightning had broken her wrist.
She said that the morning that Lightning attacked her a cougar had walked through his pasture and had gotten him excited, later that day she had gone into his pasture to feed Lightning, when he started crowding her and she waved her hand at him to shoo him away and then she started to turn her back to leave when he attacked her and grabbed her by the wrist and began thrashing her on the ground, whereupon she said that everything went black. When she came to, her husband was helping her and Lightning had left, her wrist had been severely crushed and required surgery.
The reason we believed that Lightning let go of her was probably because of the fact that she passed out and Lightning thought that she was dead.
Gelding Lightning was an option, however being that he was 12 years old and already was in the habit of attacking people and horses we suggested to her that she put him down as he was a very dangerous horse, she agreed to put him down.
so we set up a date for the vet and the hauler truck to come and put him down.
But before his body was hauled off Jeanie cut all his hair off, and now Naomi that is the story behind the fly whisk.