Ok. So I went to a wine tasting this St Patricks day... Had a few too many glasses and then sort of spent the afternoon buying a horse.
Now, before you get too concerned, I was looking for a horse, and specifically for THIS horse. He'd been living at my partners mothers house for a month. So really, its not quite as "I got drunk and bought a horse" as I've made it sound... but hey, how much more interesting is that story?
As you may imagine it's a little new to me. I mean, its my FIRST EVER horse... And having spent a large part of my holidays reading back logs of "fugly horse of the day" and "the VLC" I've taken advice mentioned and started a blog. Hopefully it keeps me motivated. Hopefully it doesn't deteriorate into the kind of drivel normally found in my journal... hmmm. There are somethings not even strangers want to know...
So anyway, here I am with this horse, lets call him, well, Very Large Gelding's taken... So... Big Red Gelding? BRG? (I've an urge to go with Roald Dahl's BFG but he's a 16.2 TB gelding, not a shire.) How 'bout Big Beautiful Boy? I can live with that, BBB.
So. The BBB is without a doubt the best first horse in the world. And yes, I know I'm biased. We've been together a month now, more actually. And so far we've done quite a bit of quiet hacking (I've been out of riding for a year and a half and am DEFINATELY out of shape!) and just last week a very short schooling session. I say very because it lasted exactly until we changed directions and trotted half a circle to the left and he felt LAME. This was a week ago today. Not hugely lame, no swelling or heat or sore points and heres me, newbie horse owner, thinking "oh my god, I have NO idea what this is." So I txted my Horse Person.
Turns out he has an abcess in his left front foot. It is suspected its been hanging about for a while but now that he's barefoot for the first time in his life and the hoof is flexing a little more BBB is feeling it. I know he had dificulty with his left lead with his former owner, which would make sense if that foot was slightly sore.
So I'm learning already. So far I've learned that BBB is a saint and will keep his foot in the bucket even when he drops half a carrot *just* out of reach. Instead of stepping forward, he walks his back feet right up close to the front feet and leeeaaans over to pick it up, then walks his back feet back again. I *love* this horse.
I have to say, he's actually got good timing with this, as not only am I starting to feed him this week (handy dandy way to keep him happy with the bucket) but with his bare feet he was iffy about the road work, which he needs, and I need because we're both unfit and his feet need toughening up. So hand walking him up and down the road twice a day is good for both of us. Hoorah. And a nice way to bond.
At the moment we're working on waiting nicely for our food without barging past and forcing our way into it.
Ok. So now I've rambled completely past explaining the origin of this blog. I think it might be a good time to stop.
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