The seeds that grew into Dark Horse took root when I was presented with two distinct

Val d’Argent

challenges:  a young horse, and an old mystery.  The two entered my life almost in tandem.  Initially I thought I would solve both reasonably quickly.  I was wrong.

The young horse: Val d’Argent, proved extremely difficult to handle.  He appeared to either dislike, or fear humans.  Likely with good cause, hence always ready to attack or defend himself.  In the early days, when I entered Val’s stall, I left the door slightly ajar, lest I had to make a hasty exit.

The old mystery did not unfold much more smoothly, but somewhere along the line I came to understand that the horse and the mystery were connected.

Val d’Argent’s dam, French Influence, was a Northern Dancer granddaughter; his sire, Silver Deputy, a great grandson of Northern Dancer. It had not occurred to me to go back one more generation: back to Nearctic.

Still, getting to the truth about Nearctic was almost as challenging as attempting to lay a brush on Val d’Argent’s bristly hide… to be continued