Your horse story reminded me of another one that I just saw yesterday on one of the special features of the Return of the King extended edition DVDs.

Apparently there were seven or eight horses that worked on the movie from start to finish, for three years, and once filming was comlete, they were going to be sold. Almost all of them were purchased by people who worked on the movies who'd grown attached to them.

Remember the scenes from FotR where Arwen (replacing Glorfindel) flees with Frodo for Rivendell with the Nazgul in hot pursuit? The stunt-rider who stood in for Liv Tyler in those scenes tells of how she fell in love with that white horse that she rode for those scenes, and how badly she wanted to buy him... but couldn't figure out how she was going to afford to, since he was a stallion and very expensive.

Viggo Mortensen (Aragorn) had already purchased the horse that played Brego in the movie, and apparently he heard about the stunt-rider's dilemma somehow. He bought the horse and gave it to her. She was telling about it on the DVD and was nearly in tears. I thought it was very touching, and it gave me whole new level of respect for Mortensen as a person, beyond that I already had for his acting ability.

Gri"thought of Leen while watching that"shny