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Categories: Horse News

Budweiser Clydesdales Give 95-Year-Old Hospice Patient a Wish Come True

If you knew could make a wish for one perfect day, what would that day be? Since you’re a horseillustrated.com reader, it’s a safe bet that your best day would include horses. The same is true for 95-year-old Marion Roberts, a patient at Crossroads Hospice in Missouri. And thanks to the hospice’s Gift of a Day program, her wish came true.



Photo: Crossroads Hospice



 



A former trick rider who performed in rodeos during her teenage years, Roberts wanted to meet the famous Budweiser Clydesdales. Warm Springs Ranch in Boonville, Missouri, is home to the mares, stallions and foals that are the future of Budweiser’s iconic hitches. Visitors are able to tour the ranch during the tourist season beginning in April, but Warm Springs offered to let Roberts in for an exclusive early season visit.

Roberts favorite thing about horses will resonate with many horse lovers: “Their trust,” she says. “They trust you wholeheartedly, and you never want to break that trust.”

Click here to read more about Marion Roberts’ special day and see more photos.

Crossroads Hospice’s Gift of a Day program is a simple concept with profound results for patients. The idea comes from a single question: If you had one perfect day, what would it look like? Staff, volunteers and local businesses work together to create that perfect day for each patient. Find out more at crossroadshospice.com.

Leslie Potter

Leslie Potter is a graduate of William Woods University where she earned a Bachelor of Science in Equestrian Science with a concentration in saddle seat riding and a minor in Journalism/Mass Communications. She is currently a writer and photographer in Lexington, Ky. Potter worked as a barn manager and riding instructor and was a freelance reporter and photographer for the Horsemen's Yankee Pedlar and Saddle Horse Report before moving to Lexington to join Horse Illustrated as Web Editor from 2008 to 2019. Her current equestrian pursuits include being a grown-up lesson kid at an eventing barn and trail riding with her senior Morgan gelding, Snoopy.

View Comments

  • This is FANTASTIC. As a Social Worker at Mountain Valley Hospice my heart melted while reading this article. I love the compassion of the Budweiser folks in honoring a dying patients wish! Something she will remember till her last breath. Its all about "Life" till the end. God Bless you all!!

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