The author of the Paradise blog I follow sent a comment about my book review:
"I have NEVER been able to go shopping for a particular style horse. It has always happened that if the horse is for sale and I had the cash, well, it was too good to pass up. And it has worked out incredibly well (except for the inbred baby that came from a mare I bought that I didn't know was pregnant). How did you come by your horses?"
Well actually, I'm not good at meeting a horse then passing up the opportunity to buy him/her either! Which is why the first two horses I bought for myself came to me rather than me finding them. I finally reached a point where I was able to look for what I specifically felt I needed when I bought Lizzie, though. Terrific -- now that we have all the horses our barn will hold, NOW I'm getting better at it. Sigh.
Anyway -- first came Midnight (now renamed "Knight"), a 13-year-old Tennessee Walker stallion that I adopted about two weeks after he was gelded. He came from a local horse rescue organization and was being fostered at a place where he was the only horse, so I didn't realize that he would be anything other than the sweet boy I met there. Well, actually he WAS a sweet boy -- with people he was always wonderful. But what I couldn't tell when I looked at him in his foster home was that he had been a pasture-breeding stallion for over a decade and thought he STILL was. When I got him to the boarding facility and he had to be pastured with other horses, that turned out to be a big, BIG problem. Check out Our Horses for photos and details of THAT little problem. Anyway, Knight now lives with my good friend who actually knows how to handle a would-be stallion.
_________ * * * * __________
Next came Duke. Once Mark accepted that this "horse thing" was probably not a passing phase with me, he decided he would like to have a horse as well -- despite the fact that except for that pony picture when he was six years old, he had never been on a horse in his life either! We couldn't even find anyone to give him lessons before we got Duke because no one had tack that would fit him. (Seems all the teachers around here deal mostly with teen-age girls --- not 60+ men who are 6'4" and 250 lbs!!)
We found Duke online - Horsetopia.com:
We figured if he was patient enough to deal with all those kids, he might also be a fine horse for Mark to learn to ride on. AND he was stocky enough to easily carry him while still being short enough to allow him to mount fairly easily. (He's only 15.2.) And he IS beautiful!
When we got up there to see him, the moment we stopped the car next to his paddock, he ran over and let Mark pet him. He is SUCH a sweet boy!
______________ * * * * ______________
Then came Ladybug. She's a little Tennessee Walker who belonged to the granddaughter of the guy who owns the barn where I boarded Midnight. But as a teenager, the granddaughter had gotten very involved in dance and virtually never rode anymore, so Bug had just been hanging out in the pasture twiddling her thumbs, so to speak, for several years. Since I couldn't handle Midnight well enough to ride him at that time, Al told me I could ride Bug whenever I liked. So I rode her and had begun caring for her, and had gotten very attached to her. Then one day Al called to tell me that someone had come by to look at a horse one of the other boarders had for sale and asked to buy Ladybug instead for their daughter. But since he knew I liked her, he wanted to give me a chance to buy her first. I had two days to decide. So of course I bought her! So there I was. I'd now bought TWO horses without ever having actually gone out and tried out any horses that were for sale to see what various gaited horses felt like to ride. For that matter, the only horses they had where I took lessons were thoroughbreds -- nothing gaited. But I had decided that I definitely wanted gaited horses because Mark and I were both already in our 60's so the idea of having to post was NOT attractive! But other than that, I really had no information at all about how to choose an appropriate horse! I just knew I loved them all!
Although Bug and I do get along great, I have since discovered that she is extremely bitchy -- even for a mare. And she had been left alone in the pasture for so long when I started riding her that she really needed some serious refresher training. We do okay as long as we stay in the pastures in the vicinity of the barn, but I don't think I'd try taking her out on any trail rides somewhere strange unless she spent a while with a real trainer.
___________ * * * * __________
And now that I have Lizzie, that probably won't happen. Lizzie is just sooo easy to ride. I found Lizzie listed on Horsetopia.com. She was for sale up in North Louisiana in the same town as a Clinton Anderson Tour stop Mark and I were planning to attend. So we made arrangements to go by and see her while we were staying up there for the weekend. The woman had two horses for sale. One was absolutely stunning. I'd only ever seen one like her on TV. BUT she was well over 16 hands tall. Forget the mounting block -- there was no way I could ever get on her without a ladder! And then the woman had Lizzie. She isn't nearly as beautiful conformationally, but she is a nice 15.0 and she was sooooo smooth to ride. She had belonged to a woman in her 70's and I took that as a sign that she might still be appropriate for me when I'm in MY 70's -- not that long from now! We didn't buy her on the spot. I knew that this would be the last horse I would be able to buy. But after giving it some thought, I sent Mark back up there to bring her home the next month and I'm so glad we got her. Except for the fact that she is THE messiest horse I've ever seen when it comes to glopping up her stall (nobody's perfect, right?), she is just perfect for me.
1 comment:
Great post!
Post a Comment