Zipped in Black Magic (left) is shown at the Pennsylvania State 4-H Horse Show with rider Austin Palumbo and his sister, Joelle Palumbo Manners with Dare to Be Lonesome. Credit Eric Hardesty, Excalibur Photography
Zipped In Black Magic is a working lesson horse with All Riders Up, therapeutic riding of Garnet Valley, PA, earning awards and the affection of the staff and students who work with him, despite the fact that he is blind. He has been recognized as a top lesson horse and has even been made into a Breyer model horse.
Zip (as he is known at the barn) has gone through a series of twists and turns of fate that have gotten him to where he is today.
Billie Palumbo of Reynoldsville, PA, always wanted a horse. Her first love was a Breyer plastic model of the black appaloosa Stud Spider. “I saw that horse and said, ‘if I ever have a horse, that is what I want’,” she said.
Palumbo got her first horse at 13 and went on to own others. At one time, had an appaloosa mare named Kelly’s Star Fire, but she still dreamed of one day having a top show quality appaloosa. So she decided to try to breed her mare to stallion Black Magic Zippo.
When he was born, Zipped In Black Magic was everything Palumbo could have imagined. “He was the spitting image of Black Magic Zippo,” she said. “He was the horse that I always wanted.”
In fact, he was so good that Palumbo was left with a quandary. Here was a horse that was good enough to remain a stallion, but she was not equipped to stand a stallion at stud.
Palumbo made the difficult decision to sell her dream horse to a home where he would be able to meet his full potential. She received several offers, and finally agreed on one from a Texas breeder who wanted to purchase Zip as a colt.
Just before the sale was completed, when Zip was just four-months-old, Palumbo went out to the barn one morning to find that the colt was standing strangely. He was diagnosed with a contracted tendon that might be correctable with surgery, but without it, he would be lame for life.
Fortunately, Zip came through treatment and recovered with full return to soundness, but the buyer was no longer interested in Zip, and neither were any of the other breeders who had made offers for the colt.
Since Palumbo could not find a buyer for Zip as a colt, she made the decision to have him gelded and keep him for herself.
Zip was a big success from the start in the color classes at appaloosa shows, earning a Register of Merit in Most Colorful at Halter, but he was not an easy horse to train under saddle.
“He was such a brat. He was terrible to train. It took us until he was five,” Palumbo said. “I was not going to give up on this horse. At five he matured and he became a really good horse.”
Zip became a dependable mount. Palumbo’s son Austin showed him in 4-H competition going to States, while Palumbo and her daughter Joelle Manners took him to Appaloosa shows.
“Zip would try and try and try, but he was never the top show horse,” Palumbo said. Eventually Palumbo purchased a mare, Totally In The Weeds, who filled that role as top show horse.
Meanwhile, Zip was part of the family, so he stayed with Palumbo, and later with Manners as a lesson horse. “I ended up with the show horse, but I couldn’t get rid of my Zip,” Palumbo said.
Zip’s life took another turn when he was about 13, and he began to show signs of equine recurrent uvitis, commonly known as moon blindness. Drops slowed the progress of the disease, but eventually he lost the sight in one eye. Manners had just built her own facility, and she took Zip as a lesson horse, but he had to adapt to limited vision.
Two years later he lost the sight in his second eye, and Zip had to adapt again. He continued to work as a lesson horse and was able to do his job until one day he tripped with a rider on board. Again the question came up, ‘What should become of Zip?’
Eventually, it was time to make another difficult choice. Because he had worked as a lesson horse, at 17, Manners thought there might still be a future for Zip, this time as a therapeutic riding mount. She researched and contacted many potential homes for Zip, but the only program that was interested in accepting a blind horse was All Riders Up in Garnet Valley, PA.
All Riders Up
All Riders Up is a small, non-profit program that grew out of the home farm of Art and Marcy Laver. They were surprised when contacted about taking Zip, but Palumbo and Manners were so convinced that Zip would be up to the job that the Lavers were willing to give him a chance.
As he always has, Zip adapted to his new home and became a favorite. “He is intuitive, he seems to understand what riders need,” Samantha Facciolo, a PATH Intl. Certified Therapeutic Riding Instructor at All Riders Up said. “He has a really attuned sense to what people need.”
All Riders Up has riders of all ages and a wide range of ability levels including physical, mental and emotional challenges. Zip is used for lessons with riders who are accompanied by side walkers, plus he is used off the lead line by riders with higher skill levels. He works with students at the walk, trot and canter, and even goes out on trails.
“As long as he understands that the rider is confident enough in his or her skills, he completely trusts that rider,” Facciolo said. “In a lot of ways, he takes care of them and he senses what they need. It makes them feel really good that he’s looking out for them.”
Zip has now made appearances in front of big crowds, first in Harrisburg, at the Pennsylvania National Horse Show’s main arena to accept the 2017 Pennsylvania National Horse Show Foundation Therapy Horse of the Year Award. In 2018 he was inducted into the Equus Foundation Hall of Fame.
This July, Zip traveled to the Kentucky Horse Park in Lexington, KY, where he was featured at Breyerfest. His story was told before a packed arena of horsemen and model horse collectors, The presentation became particularly poignant when the announcer went off script to tell how much his own daughter has benefitted from therapeutic riding lessons. Throughout the four day event visitors had the chance to visit Zip at his stall and meet him up close.
“It’s great to see how much of an impact one horse and his story had on so many people. We’re glad he’s been able to touch people’s lives,” Facciolo said.
Coming full circle, Zipped In Black Magic is now a Breyer model horse. One of his models sits on a shelf at Palumbo’s home beside that old model of Stud Spider that started the story even before Zip was born.
For more information on All Riders Up, visit www.allridersup.org or email allridersup@comcast.net