It’s not all bad news, though, at Sprieser Sporthorse. The last few weeks have been a little dark—Cleo, a staffing crisis, sale horse drama, and the general chaos that comes with being Boss of the Applesauce times about a kajillion—but this week, I’ve got something to celebrate, too. Billy, my wonderful Trakehner, the man who started it all, turned 18 on Tuesday. (I was going to buy him an Equus to celebrate, but the centerfold just isn’t that great this issue.)

Bellinger came into my life in 2003. A semester into college, I realized that being horseless made me miserable, and we trotted off to Germany to find me a schoolmaster. My mom and I arrived fairly late in the afternoon, but our wonderful friend and agent Michael said that he had some horses I could see that night, if I wanted. I was up for it, Mom wasn’t, and so off I went alone to a little sales barn in the outskirts of Warendorf. It was SO cold, and SO dark, and into the arena came this skinny, wild-eyed Trakehner gelding.

Straight from the Hallmark channel, it was love at first sight. I couldn’t ride to save my life, but Billy didn’t really care—at that point, he actually went better the more you pulled his head down. I went back to the hotel and said, “Mom, I found him.”

“Right,” she said. “You’ve been in Germany less than six hours, and you’ve found him.”

We showed her!

Billy and I flopped around for a few years, in spite of Lendon Gray’s best efforts to the contrary, with moderate successes at the Young Rider level. I had to learn how to feed a fire-breathing hard keeper, how to braid a neck in constant motion, and how to contain the most exuberant front end I’ve ever sat on to this day. The turning point for Billy and I—really, a turning point for my riding career in general—came in my four-month stay with Monica and the late Georg Theodorescu, where I had my stirrups taken away for nearly half my stay, and where Georg showed me that no matter how scary it is, giving the reins almost always makes things better.

We started scoring in the high 60s, low 70s at Prix St. Georges, and then moved up to Grand Prix. For a horse with no walk and a dreadful piaffe, we were awfully good. Billy has the most unbelievable half-halt at the canter, and his pirouettes are from a textbook—so on-the-spot, so from the seat. His canter is what I aspire to for all my other horses. So far, none come close.

We were third at Gladstone in the first Brentina Cup championship, behind two Team quality horses and received an award from the Trakehner Verband for his scores at Grand Prix. I thought we were on top of the world.

That winter, he took third in the Grand Prix and won the Grand Prix Special at one of the Loxahatchee shows, only to then stand up in the piaffe in the I2. Weird, I thought. Billy’s evasion of choice has always been the rear, but never in a naughty way—only when I really provoked him by doing something monumentally stupid, like kicking and pulling simultaneously. This was naughty.

I chased it around for a while but never got my finger on it. Why was it only at shows? No lameness. Tack fit fine. Weird. He’d get good enough Grand Prix scores at one show, and then flip out at the next. We were cataclysmic at Gladstone, and then got high-60s at the next show, and then were a disaster at the show after that, and I made the decision to retire him. “He’s clearly trying to tell me something’s not right,” I thought.

I moved to Virginia shortly thereafter, and as a last-ditch effort, I brought him to Kent Allen, lameness diagnostician to the Equine Stars. And there it was—arthritis of the vertical processes of the spine. One shockwave treatment later, and I had my horse back. Another lesson to thank Billy for: When something’s Not Quite Right, never take the possibility of a veterinary problem for granted.

He worked brilliantly through the winter, but coming into spring Billy started to slow down. It’s funny—it wasn’t his half-hearted work that made the decision for me; it was his quietness, the fact that I could teach beginner lessons on him, or hack him in a snaffle without fearing for my health, or turn him out. The fact that my loopy Trakehner was becoming reliable and dependable was what made me realize he didn’t want to be an FEI horse anymore.

It worked out that a student of mine was in need of a horse to ride for a short while, so we worked out a temporary lease agreement. Two years later, it’s still going strong, and it’s an absolutely stellar situation—he’s getting top-notch care and getting to pick on, er, I mean teach someone else. She’s getting a wonderful horse to learn from, with a safety clause that she can return him to me the second he starts to feel his age; and I get to see him all the time, as I teach her on him twice a week. He’s fat and happy. His hocks are doing just fine, his terrible little feet still kickin’. He quietly turns out, with a fly mask and all, and you can even touch his ears a little now (seven years later, the old goat).

Someday Billy will be that 37-year-old dinosaur creaking up and down the fenceline as I ride my next loopy young thing, jealously pinning his ears and trying to show me he’s still got it. Until then, he’s the sunshine in my week. And on Tuesday, he became legal to vote, or something like that.

Back in the day, I had an idea to fundraise for his showing by selling bumper stickers that read “Bellinger for President.” Billy, my best friend, my darling, my dear? You’ve got my vote. Happy Birthday.