Ladner's Erin Rogers was reunited with an old friend earlier this month.
It took Rogers six years of searching to track down Splash, a horse she had owned from 1995 to 2000, before eventually finding a photo of the gelding on a horse rescue website.
"I looked at the picture on my friend's little phone and he was so thin and dirty. He was only an inch big on the phone and I knew it was him," says Rogers, 40.
She's had him back for about two weeks.
"He's been through a lot. He's not healthy right now," Rogers says, noting the horse had trouble digesting food up until a handful of days ago. "But it does feel like I've never sold him."
Splash is now 24.
Rogers was coping with serious health issues when she originally bought Splash.
"He was very special to me," she says.
Rogers eventually underwent successful kidney and pancreas transplants but still had "a lot of damage from being so sick," including blood pressure problems.
She sold Splash to an acquaintance.
"I was really, really dizzy and having trouble standing and walking. It was just getting worse and worse. It wasn't fair to keep him because I couldn't do much with him."
Rogers began looking for Splash when she found out the acquaintance had sold him.
"That's when I started searching for him on Facebook, getting the word out, looking at the rescue sites."
These days Rogers, who's had CTV News do a story on her reunion, says she feels good but still gets run down.
"I still have the problems but they're a lot better."
Rogers found Splash on the J&M Acres Horse Rescue site. The private horse rescue, located in Maple Ridge, aims to "get as many horses as we can off the meat truck and adopted into loving homes," its site (www.jmacresrescue.com) states.
A video of her reunion with Splash can be seen on Youtube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iFAROMKT3iI.
