The photo that changed me: hoofprints on my heart

Author and filmmaker Staci Layne Wilson traded her riding boots for a director’s chair but never forgot the lessons learned from her first and greatest teacher – a wise and patient pony named Smokey.

There’s a photograph on my desk that stops time. In it, I’m 26, perched on a small coffee-coloured pony as he rears up against the Palos Verdes shoreline in California. The Pacific spreads endlessly behind us, painted in that particular golden hour light that photographers spend lifetimes chasing. 

My riding crop is raised high – the signal that taught him this trick when we were both young and wild – and though age has stolen some of his former glory, the pony still rises to meet the moment with all the dignity of an old king greeting his court.

This single frame captures everything: the end of one chapter, the beginning of another, and the profound truth that some bonds transcend the boundaries of species, time and even death itself.

The story begins 18 years earlier, in 1974, when an eight-year-old girl met an eight-year-old gelding. My mother’s best friend Beth had decided I needed a companion – and she thought big. Not a goldfish, not a hamster – a pony. A small, sturdy creature with intelligent eyes, offset by a perfect white diamond marking on his forehead. His name was Smokey, and from the moment he stepped into our lives he was less of a pet and more of a partner; less of an animal and more of a family member.

Smokey possessed that rare combination of patience and spirit that made him the perfect teacher for an only child who didn’t yet understand her own limitations. He endured my dress-up phases with saintly forbearance – birthday hats, cowboy outfits, and once, memorably, a glittered Styrofoam unicorn horn that transformed him into a mythical creature for Halloween. He gave rides to mum’s cats and my pet rats, welcomed friends and family into our home during holidays, and somehow never seemed surprised when I’d lead him through the front door. The neighbourhood kids couldn’t believe my mother allowed a horse in the house, but then again, they’d never met Smokey.

Through him, I learned the golden rule in its purest form. Kindness bred kindness. Respect earned respect. Trust, once given, was never broken. When I was good to Smokey, he was good to me – a lesson delivered not through lectures but through the simple, daily interactions between a girl and her pony. He taught me that communication transcends words, that leadership means service, and that true partnership requires both courage and vulnerability.

As I grew, so did my understanding of what Smokey represented. He wasn’t just my childhood companion – he was my introduction to a world where interspecies relationships could be profound, transformative and utterly essential to human development. I rode him bareback along the beach, feeling his silky coat against my skin, cut-off jeans and all, understanding that this was freedom in its most elemental form.

Smokey inspired my first tentative steps into professional writing. Articles about horse training for national magazines, then a book, then a business built on the principles he’d taught me. Other horses came and went, each bringing their own lessons, but Smokey remained the constant – calm, wise, patient, intelligent. He was the foundation upon which I built not just a career, but an understanding of what it means to be truly present with another living being.

In the spring of his final year, Smokey took on one last teaching assignment. I had bred two Appaloosa fillies, and he helped me train them to lead on the trails. I would ride him while holding their lead ropes, watching as they followed the wise old pony like eager students. He moved with the patience of a master craftsman, understanding that his role now was to pass on what he’d learned. Once the fillies were properly halter-broken, something shifted in Smokey’s demeanor. He seemed to understand that his work was complete.

The photograph was taken just days before he left us. It was one of those perfect August afternoons when the light turns everything golden and the Pacific breeze carries the promise of endless possibility. As I raised my crop, feeling him respond to our old signal with diminished but unwavering enthusiasm, I felt the weight of all our shared years. This was our signature move, our private language, our way of saying to the world: we are here, we are together, we are enough.

In the photograph, Smokey’s hooves are barely two feet off the ground – a far cry from the spectacular rears of his youth – but his spirit remains undaunted. His eyes hold that familiar intelligence, that gentle humor that had sustained us both through nearly two decades of partnership. 

Three days later, Smokey lay down in his corral and never got up again. He passed peacefully, as he had lived – with dignity, grace and the quiet wisdom that had made him such an extraordinary teacher. The timing felt deliberate, as if he had waited to ensure I had this final, perfect memory to carry forward.

The photograph now serves as more than remembrance – it’s a roadmap. In it, I see the foundation of everything I would become: the writer, the trainer, the woman who understood that the most profound relationships often exist between beings who share no common language except love. Smokey taught me that size doesn’t determine strength, that age doesn’t diminish worth, and that the deepest connections transcend the boundaries we assume separate us from the natural world.

When I look at this image, I feel it all again: the warmth of his coat, the cool of the sea breeze, the brightness of the waning sun. The sound of waves against the shore, the rhythm of his breathing, the perfect synchronicity of two hearts beating in time with the eternal pulse of the ocean. These sense memories remind me that some gifts are too precious to quantify, too profound to fully explain, and too important to ever forget.

Smokey’s hoofprints may have faded from that Palos Verdes beach, but they remain forever impressed upon my heart. In teaching me to see beyond the surface, to communicate without words, and to trust without reservation, he didn’t just shape my career – he shaped my soul. The eight-year-old girl who met an eight-year-old pony couldn’t have known she was encountering her first and most important teacher. But the 26-year-old woman in the photograph understood completely. Some bonds, once forged, are eternal. Some teachers, once encountered, never really leave us.

And some hoofprints, once made, last forever.