The horse playing Spartan on Heartland now belongs to Amber Marshall. Hawk is a black Quarter Horse gelding she brought home in March 2011. He took over Amy Fleming’s horse in Season 17 after Stormy, the original Spartan, retired with arthritis. Marshall’s own farm page lists Hawk as Spartan from “Season 17-present.” Before that, he had a small part as a client horse in Season 16, Episode 9.
“Now I get to work with my own horse every day, which is really cool,” Marshall told COWGIRL magazine.
Spartan is why Heartland exists. In the October 2007 pilot, “Coming Home,” Amy finds an abused horse on Mr. Mallen’s farm and talks her mother, Marion, into rescuing him during a storm. On the drive home the truck and trailer go off the road, and Marion dies. Scott recommends putting the traumatized horse down. Jack refuses and brings Spartan to Heartland, where Amy’s work with him becomes her way through the grief.
On the show, Spartan is a black gelding, not a stallion. The stallion version of the rescue comes from Lauren Brooke’s Heartland novels, which the series is based on.
Stormy was a black Quarter Horse gelding, and Heartland was his first acting job. In a 2013 Q&A with Horse Nation, Marshall said he was five when the series began. In a more recent COWGIRL interview she put it at four, and said the production usually doesn’t use horses younger than 10.
Marshall described him as a natural. She said he learned to find his mark, stopping at a cone placed in the grass, and that he loved being scratched “right under his cheeks between his jowls.” Most horses get bored during long barn scenes, she told Horse Nation, but “Not Stormy–he soaks up every minute of fame.”
Marshall said Stormy hated sharing the job. “It’s almost as if when we use other horses, he gets angry, like ‘Wait a minute, this is my job!'” Marshall told Horse Canada. She said she requested him for emotional scenes: “I know that if I have a big scene and I lean my cheek on a horse’s face, Stormy’s not going to head butt me in the middle of the moment.”
Stormy was the main Spartan, but not the only horse in the role. Doubles handled some of the work, including liberty horses owned by stunt rider Niki Flundra in Season 5.
Spartan’s biggest scare came in Season 6. A jumping accident in “Playing with Fire” left him with a broken leg. In the next episode, “Waiting for Tomorrow” (aired February 10, 2013), Amy had to choose between surgery and putting him down. She chose surgery, and it worked.
His later storyline followed the real horse. By Season 14, Marshall said, Stormy was 18, had arthritis and was “sore and starting to get grumpy.” She asked the writers to give the character arthritis too. On screen, Spartan is diagnosed in Season 13’s “Fight or Flight” and stops jumping. In Season 15, Finn’s corrective shoeing helps, and in “The Long Game” (Season 15, Episode 9) Amy enters him in an endurance race, which they win.
Stormy is retired and lives with Ray, one of the show’s original wranglers, along with two other horses that retired from Heartland. “They’re the three old guys now,” Marshall told COWGIRL. “Stormy’s pampered and happy, and it makes me happy knowing he’s living his best life.”
