Even though six years have passed, Jessica Van Wyen still can’t explain why she felt so compelled to go see the unregistered 3-year-old Thoroughbred filly whose ad popped up on her social media. It was late 2017, and Van Wyen was a newlywed; she and her husband Reese were putting every penny they had toward the down payment for a house. Further, the couple were coping with the emotional aftermath of a devastating miscarriage. With all that was going on, buying a new horse was absolutely not in the couple’s strategic plan.
Despite all this, Jessica simply couldn’t get the plain bay filly out of her mind. In early November, she convinced a friend to make the drive with her to Warsaw, Virginia, to see the animal in person.
“Something told me to go look at her,” recalled Jessica, 37. “When my friend and I got there, we were floored by how thin she was. She was a woolly mammoth, and had this huge worm belly—but she was skin and bone.
“Her owner would come and feed her and the other horse she had on the weekends,” Jessica continued. “Other than that, there was a round bale that was all molded, and probably was not even suitable for cows. Their only source of water was a drainage pond. I was like, ‘I can’t leave this horse here.’ ”
Jessica did some quick brainstorming, and offered to take the filly on a week-long trial. The owner agreed, and on Nov. 11, Jessica moved the filly to her trainer’s barn in Culpeper, Virginia.
“What I was trying to do was just get her out of the situation, and see if there was somebody at the barn who would buy her,” Jessica said.
The filly went into quarantine, and Jessica arranged for Dr. Anna Russau, VMD, of Warrenton Horse Works, to examine her. In addition to deciding the filly’s health paperwork was most likely forged (meaning she had an unknown vaccination status), Russau confirmed she was emaciated, giving her a body condition score of only 2. Russau also believed the filly was carrying a potentially lethal load of internal parasites—in addition to her pot-bellied appearance, worms were visible in her manure.
“She said, ‘If you buy this horse, understand there is a chance she is not going to make it through winter without a severe colic,” Jessica recalled. “I was like, if that happens, at least we can make her as comfortable as possible.”
She began calling the filly “Annie” as a nod to the character Little Orphan Annie.
As the trial week neared its end, no one had stepped forward to offer the filly a home. Realistically, Jessica knew it would require anywhere from several hundred to several thousand dollars of veterinary care to get Annie healthy, and she was supposed to be cutting back on expenses—yet she also could not fathom returning the filly. Instead, Jessica and Reese came to an agreement: If she could convince the seller to part with Annie for $500 instead of her asking price of $2,000, the filly could stay.
“I broke it all down—the cost of the vaccines, of doing a fecal float, of beginning the deworming process,” Jessica said of her proposal to the seller. “I explained to her how much it was going to cost me over the next few months to get this horse to where she was even remotely healthy.”
Jessica’s plan worked, and the seller accepted her offer. As soon as the transfer of ownership was official, Jessica put Annie’s rehabilitation into motion. In addition to beginning a two-month course of ulcer medication, Annie started on a tailored, gradual deworming program. Because her worm load was so high, Russau recommended performing monthly fecal counts and deworming Annie every two weeks, rotating among drug classes based on the results. Four months would pass before Annie’s fecal egg count reduced to a level where Russau deemed it safe enough to transition to a more traditional deworming protocol, and a full six before Annie’s weight returned to a healthy level.
While Annie was recovering, Jessica dug into her past, and made the sad discovery that this was the second time in her short life that the horse had ended up in a bad situation. Before Annie had landed in Virginia, she was owned by a Thoroughbred trainer in Kentucky who had purchased her from a breeder who had fallen on hard times.
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“When she bought Annie from the breeder, she was a bag of bones then, too,” Jessica said. “So she started her life starved, then the trainer bought her and put weight on her. When she sold her to the girl I bought Annie from, the trainer thought she was going to a good home. Obviously not, because Annie got starved again.
“Crazy enough, this horse is not food aggressive, which is mind-boggling to me,” Jessica continued. “You can walk in her stall while she eats, and she doesn’t even threaten to do anything.”
Jessica learned the filly’s breeder never paid her stud fee, leaving her ineligible for registry with The Jockey Club. However, she confirmed Annie was a purebred by Get Stormy and out of a mare called Laney High. Later, her sire would provide inspiration for Annie’s show name: Unknown Storm.
“There was just so much unknown about her when I got her: [It was] unknown if she would make it through winter, unknown where she came from, unknown what would happen when she got healthy—like, would she turn [unmanageable?],” Jessica said. “There were so many unknown factors.”
By early spring, Annie had grown from 15.2 to 16 hands, and was healthy enough to begin light groundwork, and later, basic training under saddle. Far from being unmanageable once properly fed, Annie proved to be a sensible, albeit green, mount.
“She blossomed into the kindest, most willing mare anyone could ask for,” Jessica said. “When I bought her, she was barely broke. I think somebody had maybe sat on her. But she didn’t understand steering or anything like that.”
By fall 2018, almost a year exactly after coming to live with Jessica, Annie made her horse show debut. The pair swept all three classes in the pleasure division at a competition held at Hazelwild Farm in Fredericksburg, Virginia, earning the championship rosette. A month later, the pair competed in the same division at the Southwest Virginia Hunter Jumper Association Finals at the Virginia Horse Center in Lexington.
“She was only 4, and she was just doing walk, trot, canter, nothing major,” Jessica said. “But she was fabulous, and I was excited for her future.”
The following spring, the pair made their competitive jumping debut, showing in the maiden division on the local circuit. But in September, after a successful competition at Whitestone Farm in Fredericksburg, their season came to an abrupt—and terrifying—end: While shaking flies off her head, Annie caught the skin of her face on a tiny piece of screw protruding from a nearby spigot, nearly degloving it from one side of her skull. Jessica rode in the trailer with her to the veterinary hospital, holding pressure on a torn artery that was still bleeding profusely.
“It was a fluke accident,” Jessica said. “But it was one of the most terrifying moments of my life. She had to have emergency surgery for arterial repair, and spent 10 days at Piedmont Equine Hospital to recover. They did a phenomenal job with her. She lost a lot of blood, and from the injury to what the scar looks like, you would never know it was as bad as it was.”
By the time Annie had fully recovered from her accident, it was 2020, and Jessica had hopes of taking her out in the baby green division that season. But when the COVID pandemic shut down most competition opportunities for the foreseeable future, Jessica decided it was the perfect opportunity to fulfill another dream: breeding her own foal.
“I had always wanted to breed her, because she has the best brain,” Jessica said. “I can walk into any ring cold-turkey and she’ll go around and do her job. She doesn’t spook, and she jumps everything I ask her to. As Ann Garnett-Wheeler, my current trainer, says, ‘This mare would jump fire.’ She is just so honest.”
Annie was successfully bred to the Oldenburg stallion Bliss MF that spring. When competitions resumed later in the summer, she made her USEF-rated show debut and competed a handful of times at 2’6” before officially going on maternity leave in October. In April 2021, Annie gave birth to a large bay colt named Binx at the Van Wyens’ 14-acre farm in Doswell, Virginia. But as soon as he was weaned that fall, Annie seemed happy to return to Garnett-Wheeler’s Rose Mount Farm, 30 minutes away, and get back to work with Jessica in the irons.
“I only did my first rated show in 2016,” Jessica said. “Before that, I’d only ever done the local stuff, because of finances. I had a trainer once tell me that because she’s a Thoroughbred, she was going to have a hard time at the rated stuff. But you can’t always judge a book by its cover.”
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In April 2022, Annie and Jessica made their rated show debut in the adult hunter division at a competition held at Rose Mount Farm. That season, they ultimately qualified for the Zone 3 finals, where they earned several ribbons. Thrilled with their success, Jessica began planning for the future.
“In 2023, I wanted more,” she said. “I showed in the adults more consistently, with the goal of qualifying for zone finals again, and hopefully placing even better.”
Not only did the pair qualify, they earned ribbons in all three of their classes at the Zone 3 finals, held in Upperville, Virginia, in October. While there, they also competed in the Washington International Horse Show Regional Qualifier, performing consistently enough to earn a pair of fifth-place ribbons in large classes.
It was 6:45 a.m., with one more day of zone competition remaining, when Jessica received a text from Garnett-Wheeler: Annie’s weekend results had qualified her to compete at the Washington International Horse Show Regional Hunter Finals, being held in Maryland in just two days’ time.
“It just said, ‘You got in, do you want to go?’” Jessica said of the text. “I was like, ‘Am I awake? Is this a real thing?’ I was in shock; I qualified. I had to drive two hours home and get my shadbelly. I hadn’t brought it, because I didn’t think it was even possible.”
On Sunday evening, Jessica and Annie left directly from Upperville, traveling two hours north to The Show Place Arena in Upper Marlboro, Maryland, home of the Washington International. The next day, Jessica put on that shadbelly and jumped Annie around at the biggest horse show of their career.
“I can’t even put it into words, the awe I was in,” Jessica said. “My $500 Thoroughbred that nobody wanted—that I got only because I couldn’t send her back—we’re here, at the Washington International.
“I walked out of the ring after having a really good run, and I cried,” Jessica continued. “I felt like, ‘I can’t believe that just happened.’ Then we won a fourth-place ribbon.”
Looking back, Jessica admits it has taken both patience and hard work to get where they are today. But she believes their accomplishments prove it is possible to be successful on a budget, and she is proud of all they have achieved.
“She obviously had pure talent, but it took blood, sweat and tears along the way,” Jessica said. “Everybody looked at her, including my trainer at the time, and said, ‘I can’t believe you’re buying this horse.’ But for me, the lesson is, don’t turn your eye away from a horse who maybe doesn’t look the part initially.
“I see those ads out there that say ‘no Thoroughbreds,’ ” she continues. “Well, my Thoroughbred just pinned fourth at WIHS. I don’t have hundreds of thousands to spend on horses, and I did this.”
Regardless of what may come in their future, Annie has found her final home with Jessica, who wonders if perhaps their relationship was simply just meant to be.
“She’s become my heart and soul,” Jessica said. “I love her. She has persevered through so much, and is still so sweet. We totally saved each other, because I needed her in that moment as much as she needed me.”
Do you know a horse or pony who has been rescued from a dangerous situation to become a healthy, trusted competition partner today? If you think you have a good candidate for “From Rescue To Ribbons,” let us know by emailing mwright@coth.com.
