We’ve had a busy horse-related weekend. We’ve been to two horse shows and checked out a fourth horse. Meet “Cash”, a 5 year old spotted registered Tennessee Walking Horse. He’s about 15 HH, has a calm temperament, is trained and of course flashy. At one of the shows, we ran into some friends who were much more into horses than we thought. They were showing that night and during our conversation it was mentioned that they have this walker for sale. The guy bought this horse for his wife but she prefers black and white spotted coloring. She bought a black and white TWH three weeks after they bought Cash and although she loves them both, she’s only able to keep one. Mikki and I rode him a few times Sunday to get a feel for him and the ride went very well. Later Sunday we had an opportunity to ride him for a couple more hours on the theory that it’s much harder to hide bad behavior on a two hour ride than it is on a 15 minute ride. We like him so much, we asked if we could keep him for a few days to see how he does at our barn.

The ride went well. We rode him through streams, wooded trails, hills, around cows, around other horses…nothing fazed him. Mikki rode Valentine (it’s so cool having a trailer!) and the two of them hit it off nicely. Although they did seem to want to race each other, we were able to hold them back. Once one went into the TWH gait, the other automatically shifted into that awesome gait, too. Cash trailered nicely, loading and unloading without concern.

So on the positive side, he’s met all of my qualifications. Shari even likes him. The only negative we can find is his feet. One front hoof is a little longer than the other and his feet are pretty rough. It’s probably because previous owners shod him themselves. We’re going to have our farrier out to check his feet. He could also use a little weight, which is something we could work on quite easily.

So at this point we favor both Cash AND Romeo. I wish we could buy them both. We’ll see what we can do. I still plan to ask to take Romeo on a longer ride but we know his history and reputation so I’m less concerned with testing him out. I know he’s a good horse.

BTW, my shirt in this picture says “Courage is being scared to death but saddling up anyway,” a John Wayne quote. Thanks for the shirt, honey :-)

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