Our First Horse

Romeo is officially candidate number three. He’s owned by a neighbor who really doesn’t want to sell him but has moved on to a more powerful horse. Romeo is an 8 year old appaloosa gelding, about 14 HH and is well-behaved and rideable by anyone. Mikki and I spent a few hours checking him out and riding him. I rode him in fields, across bridges on pavement, through the woods, up hills, etc. and the ride, although a little slow, was easy and enjoyable. When I wanted him to go, he galloped with a little prodding. Romeo can plow and neck reign, can be ridden bareback, has been ridden double and triple and has even barrel raced, with ribbons to prove it. He has a clean bill of health, uses our same farrier and is in good shape from being ridden almost everyday. So I’d say he’s a strong candidate and probably our forerunner. I think I only snapped one picture of him without an identifiable human in it (below).

So even though he’s a little small and the asking price is a little higher than I wanted to go, maybe Romeo is the right horse. He’s a horse I could build my confidence on, break into some amateur barrel racing for fun and enjoy while I’m working on my project horse, Moonshine. And if I outgrew him, he’d be perfect for the Kid.

Plus we almost have a romance theme going in our barn. We’d have Romeo and Valentine. Moonshine might need to be renamed Juliet!

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Candidates 1 and 2 have both been ridden by our horse friend, Shari. I trust her opinion and because of that, we’ve decided to eliminate candidate 2, “Misty”. She’s a beautiful horse but spooks somewhat easily and hasn’t been ridden in three years. She doesn’t seems to know much and other than her awesome natural gait, which is quite special, can’t seem to keep any particular pace. And I don’t have the time for another project horse. Man, she’s beautiful. Oh well.

Candidate 1, “Snowball” is still a possibility but Shari thinks we can do better. So we’ll keep looking. I don’t want to rush, after all.

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I don’t remember who said it but someone once said that horses are large animals that spend their entire lives trying to kill themselves. And it’s amazing how easy it is. Frequent Our First Horse reader Laura wrote on her blog recently about a scary colic incident with her horse Little Horse (LH for short). She just had a good day of riding and returned to the barn. Soon after, her horse began acting strangely including kicking her own gut. Fortunately, Laura knew this was a sign of colic. Her story ends well but the thought occurred to me that she was quite lucky to have seen these signs before she left the barn. If she had missed them or didn’t know what they meant, LH could have died that night. Check out the story on Laura’s blog (the colic post was 5/18/08 and is titled ” A scary Friday night with LH”).

Laura is pretty seriously into horses. She even took a cattle herding class this week. That’s pretty hardcore cowboy stuff. I’m not quite ready for that but it’s fun to read about her adventure.

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We’ve been mooching off of our horse friends for too long! This weekend we made one of our regular trips to the big city (Atlanta in this case) for provisions and while we were down in Georgia we thought we’d check out some horse trailers. We’ve looked at horse trailers before but we were looking in the $1,000 - $1,500 range and to be honest, most trailers we saw in that range were rusty and worn out. We made some calls and ended up driving almost to Alabama to look at a trailer owned by Kim at the Prancing Pony Equestrian Center. The price was right so we ended up towing home a beautiful gold-colored 2004 CM two horse trailer. It’s extra-tall and extra wide for Valentine, who stands at 16.2 HH. While we would like to have a three horse trailer, our F150 isn’t cut out for that much hauling and we weren’t prepared to buy a 3/4 or one ton tow rig. Thanks to Kim and her husband (whose name escapes me) for making this such an easy transaction. Kim also showed us around her farm and introduced us to her horses, her mini-horses, goats, chickens and puppies. We wished we lived closer so we could ride with her. The Prancing Pony near Carrollton, Georgia also does birthday parties and camps for kids interested in farm animals, especially horses.

The new trailer pics are below. Finally! Now we can load up and head out to our local trails without asking our friends for a ride. We’re thankful for generous friends but are happy we can haul our own horses.

Now we just need to peel off the stickers and come up with our own logo vinyl.

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Yesterday we went to look at candidate 2 in our hunt for a new horse. This time we looked at “Misty”, a 7 year old (her birthday is today!) spotted Tennessee Walking Horse. She’s quite beautiful. Unfortunately although I took a ton of photos while we were there, the one below is best. She’s on the right. The filly on her left is hers. Her owner feels he’s too old for his horses now and he has a disease that impairs his balance. In fact he told us a story of how he fell down a hill on his farm and couldn’t walk on one of his legs. Misty came to investigate and put her head down so he could grab on while she slowly pulled him up. She then walked slowly back to the barn while he leaned on her.

So here are the pros and cons:

Pros:

1) She seems to be gentle
2) She’s beautiful - spotted like a paint with a multi-colored tail, mane and hooves. Her mane is almost twice as long as Valentine’s.
3) Her owner is a pretty well known TWH trainer, though he hasn’t been doing much these last few years due to his age and health.

Cons:

1) She’s not registered, though the owner has her notes so maybe it can still be done. I don’t know enough about the process.
2) She’s FAT. Apparently she’s not pregnant but she clearly is a chunky monkey. The owners wife says he feeds her twice a day and their pasture is beautiful so maybe she’s just eating too much. I just want to make sure her weight isn’t indicative of a health problem.
3) She’s been ridden but not in a few years. Our friend Shari is going to ride her this week for us. I don’t really need another project horse.

We plan on riding Misty and Snowball this week, once the hay has been put up. It’s going to be near 100 today in east Tennessee and it’s quite humid. Hopefully it’ll cool down some before we ride.

So what do you think of Misty?

We also bought a horse trailer this weekend! We’ve been busy! I think Mikki is writing up something about that so expect to hear about it in a day or two.

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Since Sinbad left, we’re in need of a new backup horse. I have to admit, I’m still nervous about riding Moonshine so I need another horse to ride until we figure out what to do with her. This is a great time to be a horse buyer because the combination of the closure of the slaughterhouses and the high price of hay from last year has led to a lot of owners selling. Of course, that’s not good for horse owners who are strapped for cash or have too many horses. If you’ve been reading our blog, you realize we’re the kind of horse owners who have trouble getting rid of horses. So this next horse has got to be a keeper and for that we’re willing to spend some time looking. So far we’ve found some sellers in our area with beautiful horses that we could practically get for free, but we’re not jumping in too fast this time.

So what am I looking for? I want a horse 15 years old or younger that’s easy to ride and not aggressive. I’m embarrassed to say this but looks matter. If I’m going to be stuck with this beast for my ridable life, I want it to look good to help me look good. I need all the help I can get. A solid black to match Valentine or a solid white to contrast him, would be nice. I love colored paints, too. Besides that I’m not sure if I want a gaited horse or not. It would be nice to have another Tennessee Walking Horse so Mikki and I could ride at the same gait and learn together. But I really like the smoother cantor and trot of non-gaited horses.

A search of Craigslist revealed candidate 1. I will call her “Snowball” (I would find a new name if she’s the chosen one). Snowball is a 3 year old cremello Tennessee Walking Horse, about 15 HH. She has a gentle disposition and was easy to ride, obeying all of my commands on a hair-trigger. I didn’t have to force her to do anything, except when I tried to pull her away from the gate at feeding time. She’s cremello in color and not albino. Apparently albinos have gene issues. Cremellos aren’t actually white but the color looks white. I think Snowball would make a nice addition to our herd and she seems easy to ride. Here are my concerns with her:

1) She’s a mare and we already have a strong-headed mare in our pasture. With no paddocks, we have no way to separate them if they decide to kill each other. Also, some mares, like Moonshine, don’t like to be touched or ridden when in season.
2) She’s not a registered TWH. I don’t plan on showing her or breeding her but if things didn’t work out and we wanted to sell her one day, lack of registration could make her less attractive.
3) She’s young, though she doesn’t seem too spirited. It’s hard to tell with one visit, though.

So she’s on the list. We’ll be back to ride her more and if she’s the one, we’ll work something out where she could be returned to the current owner if there are problems within the first week or two. She’s kinda pretty, huh?

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