Braider helps bereaved horse owners

When Ann Phillips’ 29-year-old horse Skipper died two years ago, it was as if she had lost a friend. The two had spent 24 years together, going on trail rides and entertaining children from her church.

Later on the day of Skipper’s death, Phillips opened her horse trailer and discovered a small box with two braids inside. The braids had been fashioned out of Skipper’s mane and tail hair and entwined with ribbon. The braids gave Phillips a keepsake to remember Skipper by.

“I took them out with me to the barn, and sat in his old stall and cried for a while,” she said.

The braids were made by Phillips’ co-worker Jane Ebben, a senior veterinary technician in the equine clinic at MU’s College of Veterinary Medicine. For nearly 10 years, Ebben, 51, has made these braided memorials for owners who are dealing with the loss of a horse.

In Ebben’s office at the equine clinic, photographs of dogs line a bulletin board and her computer screen is open to a draft of her speech on foals for an upcoming lecture at Oregon State University.

She rummages through a cabinet and pulls out a large brown box. Inside are ribbons in shades of red, purple and gold along with a small box of greeting cards, the fronts adorned with horse heads. Picking through the box, she explains how she chooses the ribbons to use in her braids.

“It depends on what color looks good with the horse,” Ebben said. “Say the horse comes in with a lead rope and a halter that match, and they’re certain colors, or I notice that the people have certain colors on their horse, I might try to match that.”

Ebben began braiding horse hair when a colleague suggested the two come up with a keepsake to help people remember their deceased horses. Although the co-worker left soon after, Ebben has continued to braid the mementos for horse owners who pass through the vet school.

“I got a lot of really favorable responses from people who had gotten them in the mail, and it meant a lot to them,” she said.

She makes an effort to make each braid personal, and estimates that she has crafted almost 100 of the mementos over the years for people from Missouri, Illinois, Kansas, Arkansas and Iowa.

“Some of them turn out just gorgeous,” she said.

To make the braids, Ebben cleans and sterilizes the clippings of the tail. Afterward, she combs Show Sheen through the hair to add shine and make the hair easier to work with. Finally, she braids the hair and ribbons together, and then uses scissors to cut off any stray hair that is creeping out of the braid. The process takes three or four days. When she’s finished, Ebben writes a personal message about the horse inside a greeting card and mails the braid and the card to the owner.

If she doesn’t know the horse or the owner, she often calls the veterinarian or the nurse who was working with the horse to get a feel for its habits and temperament to keep the messages meaningful.

“Because it’s a big facility and we see so many horses, I like to try to make it a little more personal for people,” she said.

Ebben plans to continue the practice to help owners deal with the death of a horse.

“Losing an animal is such a hard time for someone that is close to them, that loves their animal, that they really should be helped through it by somebody,” she said. “I think that doing this really helps.”