By: Zolei Alvarado & Margarita Piceno Porras 

Ms. Bresse, a History Teacher, pictured with her chaotic,  yet, loving horse. 

-Ms. Bresse, a wistful history teacher with ten years of experience, is devoted to teaching and horses. In her free time she spends time with her troubled 17 year-old-horse, Jefferson, who stuck by her for 11 years. Jefferson was named after Thomas Jefferson, the third U.S. president. Jefferson represents both her love for history and her bond with her horse. Aside from him being so troubled and chaotic, she views him as her beloved son. After all, he’s her first ever horse, and inspired her to love horses so much more. Growing up around horses, she began riding at the age of five, and Jefferson is her constant reminder of patience, challenges, and cherishing strong bonds. 

What are some characteristics of Jefferson?

-Overall, he’s a good horse, you know, he can be very, very sweet. When he bites it’s because he’s either nervous or upset about something and that’s just his reaction and then his eyes widen. So I mean it’s a little dysfunctional, but at the end of the day, he knows that I love him and he does give me some kind of emotion, I don’t know if I’d say like a love response, but like there’s an exchange there. He is sensitive, emotional, loves sugar, spoiled, not picky and has an attitude. 

What are some medical and nutritional knowledge for horses?

-So horses usually eat oats and molasses. I also know how to give injections to horses, there’s a lot of medical knowledge. There’s nutritional knowledge as well, like knowing what each animal has to have in order to be like their healthiest version of themselves. So sometimes, Jefferson will have some soreness, he has arthritis. There are drugs to help them with that and injections. Especially every six months, I’ll do like a round of whatever and pop them in the neck and he’s a lot better about injections than he is with medication, like giving it to him orally. A medication that he needs to eat daily is a little pill. So I put the pill into a fig Newton, like I break it in half, and so he gets like half a fig Newton with his pill. I give him what we call a senior feed, so it’s some grain, nutritional material. You have to be careful with stone fruits that contain large pits in it, like apricots.

Have you ever had a scary experience?  

-Scary experience, it depends. My horse is a little bit weird because, most horses, if they do something bad, you can yell at them, like knock it off. But mine will sometimes get mad back and he’ll escalate the situation. He starts coming after me. He is tempered, he can be really scary sometimes. Honestly, I have not been able to find a horse therapist. So sometimes like with him, I have to walk away and just totally ignore him because he likes to be like the center of attention, which is good and bad because, I mean, he’s pretty. I just have to just walk away and just leave him alone and just take a break and calm myself down and he’s very sensitive to any emotion. So I have to be very careful about what I bring to the barn.