Five Alive Research Paper

Paige Burton
January 17, 2018
Comp. 2 4th hour
Narrative Essay
Five Alive A horse is never truly broken. Five Alive was the name of Milton Vondy and his family’s best race horse. This family didn’t believe that this horse would ever be the best they would ever own in the beginning. Soon this family will see this horse’s true potential, but not without a few bumps along the way (G. Vondy). Milton wakes up on a cool calm spring morning. He goes out to the barn to feed and water the horses in the pasture. When he arrives he sees a new born baby colt in the barn standing next to his mom. This was a beautiful and healthy male colt. Milton bred this horse to be a race horse, and he already had hopes for the little guy. This horse would be
a quarter horse, which means he would run shorter distances. Milton goes and gets the family, so they can come and take a look at the new colt. The whole family just adored the colt and couldn’t wait to see him grow to be an amazing horse. When the colt got about a month older he got to go out and be with the other horses in the whole pasture. The whole family was there to see him get put into the pasture. Milton lets him and his mom out of the barn and all of a sudden the other horses start to chase him. The whole family begins to panic as the horse are running the colt towards the fence. All the sudden this colt runs into the barbed wire fence. The family begins to panic. Milton Vondy is a veterinarian, so he races over to the colt to take a look at him. The colt is very cut up and injured badly, but Milton decides that he can sew up the injuries and nurse this colt back to health. He also decides that this colt will most likely never race, but he would be a good horse for the kids (G. Vondy). It has been around two years since the colt had run through the fence. Milton is out at the barn watering and feeding the horses. He notices the colt who is now a grown horse running through the pasture. He thinks to himself that this is a nice looking horse and he seems to be pretty fast and sound. Milton decides that he should give this horse a chance to do what he was bred to do, be a racehorse. He hauls the horse to the racetrack in Denver, Colorado. The trainer begins training this horse, and decides that he might make a good racehorse. He decides this horse is ready to be entered in his first race, but he needed to have a name before he could be entered. Milton and the whole family discuss what the horses name should be. After about an hour they came to the decision that the horse shall be called Five Alive. This was the perfect name for him and no other racehorse had it (M. Vondy). The gate opens as the bell rings.
A field of ten horses burst out of the gates at full speed. This race is only 440 yards, it is a short one. Five Alive gets right into the lead right away and he does not give it up. He is the first one across the finish line and wins by a length. Milton and the family are ecstatic and race over to the win picture circle. They get their win picture with Five Alive and his jockey and collect their winnings. The whole family was in awe of how fast this horse seemed to be and how easily he won the race. This horse was amazing and the family adored him. He just kept winning all the races they put him in. The jockey who always road Five Alive in every race said that this was a truly amazing horse. He even said that there was this one race and they loaded Five Alive into the gates and he looked down to see that Five was sleeping. Sure enough, he was asleep in the starting gate. The jockey says I was tapping him in the neck and pulling on his ears to try and get him to wake up, and nothing. But when that starting gate opened he sprang out of it like he had not been sleeping at all. Five Alive even won that race. This horse had the biggest heart this family had ever seen. He loved to run more than anything, and that is hard to find in a horse (Burton). They started taking Five Alive to different tracks all over the place. They were so used to him winning that when he finally lost one they did not know what to think. Some of the family began to cry
when he lost, they were in shock that he had not one this race. After the race they started to notice that he was not sound. This means that his legs were soar which can mean bad things for a race horse. It turns out that he would need to have surgery on his two front legs. Milton decides that it is best to pay to get the surgery done (Burton). The veterinarians at Colorado State University of Fort Collins did the surgery. When they did the surgery they decided to do both front legs at the same time. The surgery went perfectly and his legs were goanna be okay, the family was relieved. Five Alive was coming out of the anesthesia when he tried to get up to quickly and moved his legs wrong and they both broke. They had to put him down. Milton received the call and was distraught. He came in from working in the clinic and he was crying. The whole family was wondering what was wrong. He told them Five was gone. He told them the whole story of what happened and all of them began to cry. Everyone was crying except Terry Vondy. No one understood why he was not crying, he was the one that was with the horse every day and helping with the training. Everyone was sad and could not believe that this horrible thing had really happened (T. Vondy). It was Christmas day of the same year this tragedy had taken place.
The family was gathered at Milton and his wife Doris’s house. Everyone was exchanging gifts and having a good time. Then Milton hands everyone an envelope and tells them to open them. Everyone opened the envelope and found money inside along with a picture of Five Alive. Milton had decided to give everyone in the family a chunk of the insurance money from when Five had passed away. Everyone was shocked at this, but Terry Vondy was shocked the most. He started bawling his eyes out. This was the first time he had cried since Five had passed away (T.
Vondy). The whole family knew it was time to move on and understand that this amazing animal was in a better place. Though they would forever miss this horse, they would never forget him. This horse almost died when he was a baby, but he survived. This horse proves that no horse is ever broken. He went on to be one of the greatest racehorses Milton had ever owned. Five Alive could never be truly broken (M. Vondy).

Works Cited

Burton, Holly. Five Alive and Your Life with him Paige Burton. 10 January 2018. Personal Interveiw .
Mile High Racing. n.d. Web Site . 17 January 2018. (-- removed HTML --) .
Vondy, Gail. Five Alive when he was a Baby Colt Paige Burton. 14 January 2018. Personal Interview .
Vondy, Milton. Five Alive Paige Burton. 8 January 2018 . Personal Interview .
Vondy, Terry. Five Alive and how this Effected you Paige Burton. 12 January 2018. Personal Interview.