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Sam Brown appears at the ranch and sees Joey is having some trouble with Fury. After the horse throws him, he comes to Joey's rescue and examines Fury, finding a splinter stuck in his back. After removing it, Joey is amazed; Fury isn't used to letting strangers touch him! Joey takes Sam into the house for lunch, and he eats heartily. Jim comes in while Pete, the old cook is grumbling about having to feed hobos, and he's even more upset when Jim hires him on the spot to help wrangle a herd. Sam is given some cowboy clothes (he had come wearing dress slacks and a denim jacket and carrying a suitcase) and goes out with Jim to help with the herd; he meets two other wranglers, one of whom is having problems with a lame horse. He pulls the man off the horse and then takes a hoof pick out of his pocket and takes a stone out of the horse's hoof. Jim is amazed; the only other person he has ever seen able to calm an agonized horse is a vet. Later, when he's in town at the sheriff's office, Jim sees a list of wanted criminals and sees Sam on the list. When he returns home he asks Sam about it, and he says he was trying to save a man's life, but he died while under his care. Jim says that maybe a jury wouldn't think that a crime, and just then, he and Sam are called out to the barn to tend Fury. Even though Joey begs him to look at his horse, Sam says he can't, but as he's leaving, he has an attack of conscience and goes back, treating Fury for pneumonia. When Jim's regular vet gets there, he recognizes that Sam has done a terrific job, and says he hopes he can stay around. Sam goes off with the sheriff to stand trial, and is acquitted. He comes back to see Joey, Jim, Pete and Fury and tells them he had been appointed head of Animal Husbandry by the state.

I got a VCR tape of this movie yesterday and think it is excellent. It must be set in Canada, because I don't think you can just pick up companions for your crippled children in the US, even if you are rich. It's a good story about never giving up your dreams, although I wish there had been more mentioned about Pasqual's family, such as it was. In explaining her unusual name, she says her Grandmother named her that because she was born around Easter, like that's an explanation. I assume she was living with her Grandmother, because her father is in and out of jail. I'm not sure what's going on with her mother. It's definitely worthwhile to rent for a weekend! I was also pleased to see that Duncan Regehr played the rich father -- I only know him from THE NEW ADVENTURES OF ZORRO, a weekly show that was on The Family Channel in the early 1990's.

This episode follows Kidnapped, and is about how Alec gets the spirit back in his horse after he has been transported in a ship and kept in quarantine by French officials for so long. When Alec first sees him, he says to Henry, "What did they do to him?" because the Black is truly only a shadow of the spirited animal he had been before. Of course Henry says he has seen something like this before, then says that maybe the Black's spirit is broken. Alec refuses to believe this, and takes the Black into the mountains, where his spirit can be restored. He says "it'll be just like it was on the island," where they were together first, and they spend days training, even trying to run up an especially steep path. (Thirty-some years ago, I had a grade horse gelding who used to run up a steep hill like that, too)The first time they try the Black balks and falls, but the second time, he runs up the hill, and Alec knows he is has returned to him competitive form. When they return to the track, the Black beats a famous French racehorse named Eclaire by 3 lengths.