Pampered pets
Renae Dudley gets up at 6:30 every morning and opens the door for her dogs, only to hear a whinny as soon as the horses know she’s awake.
“It’s time for us to eat,” Copper and Chrome are more than eager to tell their caretakers from their pen, a stone’s throw away from the Spanker Ridge Drive home.
“They’re my pets,” said Dudley, an equine expert with a background in horse training, showing and breeding. “I never thought I would call a horse a pet because that’s a no-no, but mine are pets. They get carrots every day.”
The horses, which provide companionship, also go on trail rides.
Dudley said that, while her home is in Bella Vista city limits, it is not in the Property Owners Association. She has a Bentonville address. The covenants in Spanker Creek Estates subdivision allow individuals to have livestock, including horses, she said, and that was part of why she bought the house she did.
She shares the home with her significant other, Denny Deischer. Deischer said they’ve been together 17 years. He’s a golfer, he said, though she got him interested in horses after a group trail ride.
Dudley said she’s been interested in horses since she was very young and had her first equine at 10 years old and started doing horse shows in her teens.
“I was born with the gene,” she said. “That’s what my mother says.”
Dudley married horse trainer Jim Dudley, who still runs Jim Dudley Quarter Horses, she said, and they had a horse breeding operation for a quarter of a century and produced several noteworthy horses, including American Quarter Horse Association hall-of-famer Scotch Bar Time.
She eventually divorced, then met Deischer, she said.
She moved to Bella Vista six years ago, she said, largely to be closer to her father, who has lived in Bella Vista since the late 1970s. But another draw, she said, was access to excellent riding trails.
“We have probably some of the best horse trails in the United States right here within probably an hour, hour and a half drive of Bella Vista,” she said.
The area surrounding her house wasn’t built for horses, she said. She spent a few years putting everything together — including a barn and fencing — before bringing Copper and Chrome to their new home last year.
Good fencing, she said, is critical, and she has the best fencing she could get. The thick bars are spaced such that, while they keep the horses contained, they do not prevent them from sticking their heads through and there’s enough space that horses won’t get caught on them.
“We love our horses, we take very good care of them,” Dudley said. “I wouldn’t have a horse if I couldn’t take the best of care of them.”
The horses are fed twice daily, she said, with a mix of orchard grass and alfalfa, which is brought in from Iowa. Local alfalfa can’t be used, she said, because it tends to have blister beetles, which can kill a horse. They buy hay, she said, once per year and store it in their barn. The horses eat roughly two-thirds of a bale each day.
The two horses also get a mix of oats and seeds, she said, including sunflower seeds, which are good for the hooves and coat.
Dudley estimated they spend $1,800 each year per horse just in food.
The other major expense, she said, is keeping them shod. The horse’s shoes, she said, are replaced every five weeks, which can cost between $80 and $125 per horse, though their farrier — the professional who changes horseshoes — charges $125.
Their farrier, she said, actually makes the shoes himself and does excellent work. His work costs more, she said, but it’s money well spent.
“If you have a poor farrier, you can cripple one for life,” Dudley said. “If a horse has no feet, you have no horse.”
Her horses also wear masks, she said, which may look uncomfortable during the summer heat. But those masks don’t restrict their vision much, if at all, she said, but they keep potentially harmful flies and other debris out of their eyes.
Beyond that, she said, the horses have veterinary needs like any other animal. They need regular vaccinations, which need to be tailored to the region to ensure they’re protected against what they might realistically encounter.
If there’s a storm, she said, the horses need to be brought into their stalls, which can incur additional bedding costs.
“So when your kid comes home and says ‘Dad, I can buy a horse for $500,’” she said, “add $2,000 to that. Every year.”
Horses are very social animals, she said — Copper and Chrome are no exception. They get separation anxiety if they’re apart, she said, and anyone considering horses needs to make sure their horse has a companion.
They spend most of their time in a dry lot with an awning for shelter from the weather, she said, and they have a pasture in front of the house they’re let loose in to exercise a few times each week.
The horses do not need to be in a grass-filled pasture full time, she said. Many horses that stay unattended in a pasture at all times are actually less healthy for it — and the pasture can suffer.
“If I were to maintain them there on a full-time basis, that would end up looking like a dry lot,” she said.
Dudley said that while she spends a lot of money and time caring for her horses, it’s a lifestyle she has no intention of giving up.
With any luck, she said, she can keep riding 16-year-old Chrome until he’s 21 or 22. She and Deischer lucked out on these two, she said, because they’ve proven to be excellent for trail riding.
“He is a good boy…. He takes care of me, he looks after me, he cares about me,” Dudley said. “I would’ve never talked like this 10 years ago, they were just a horse 10 years ago but these boys are my pets.”