This morning Emily and I headed out at 7:30 to go meet Amanda at the barn so we could go eat some breakfast at Cracker Barrel with their friends Sheila and (little) Amanda Bird before going to a horse auction. Sheila was looking for a new horse and this auction was supposed to have 8 horses. Their owners hadn't paid for board so they now belonged to the stables.
Well turns out that there were only 2. And one was a 25 year old gelding. Not what they were looking for. We met Amanda at Emily's barn and drove in Amanda's truck to Cracker Barrel. We went in and met the Birds and were quickly seated. We got our drinks and talked. And talked and talked and talked! In fact an hour shot by without us noticing except for one thing- we still hadn't eaten.
Why?
We hadn't been served our food yet.
But we had to go to this auction at 9 and so we had to go. Without eating. Luckily our waiter was very understanding and let us go- drinks on the house.
We went in Sheila's truck. The stables where we were going was where Amanda got her horse Indy- the horse that led Amanda to Parelli and is one of Emily's biggest teachers.
I will admit it was quite run down. The arena fence was so where a distressed horse could easily jump out. (Which is almost what happened-but more on that later) Then again, a horse who just felt like leaving the arena could do it way to easily.
The horse we were going to look at was Sugar. (Though we didn't know her name at first) We didn't know anything about her... We had to go SEE her to know something about her. She turned out to be a 15 hand-ish mare, a dark brown/black. A sweet, shy soul. We led her up to the arena and got her to move out because we were unsure of her gaits. The barn manager said that maybe she was a Missouri Foxtrotter. But it was all very iffy because the owner had just dumped her off at the stable.
Leading her up to the arena I was observing her very closely. I have been trying to develop my eye at recognizing Horsenalities within a few minutes of being around them. I could see very quickly that she was Introverted. She wasn't trying to eat the grass, even when we were stopped. (Coming from being around 2 left brain introverted horses, and having to play with one during the week, it did strike me as very strange!) She was slightly tense. This led me to think that she was probably Right Brain Introvert.
Emily sent Sugar around the arena and she quickly went very Right Brain as well as extroverted. Okay...so maybe I was wrong...
It quickly became clear that she was figuring out to jump over the fence. If she did she could cause chaos with the herd of horses that was in the same area as the arena. Or she could run back down to the barn where she came from and getting hurt while trying to get back to them.
Emily saw it and called Amanda into the arena to lower her energy to try and calm the mare. When that didn't work Emily asked me to go and stand by the part of the fence where Sugar seemed to be thinking about jumping.
I thought I was supposed to keep her away from the fence. "No! Bring your energy down, calm her down!" Oops.
So what I did is I blew out and out and out. Drooped my shoulders, sagged in my back. Let all the life out of my body.
It worked somewhat. She was still rather high strung but she stayed rather close to me and even dropped her head to grab a few bites of grass. We had a couple scares that she would jump while Emily tried to halter her again, but she did it without Sugar jumping out.
After that incident, Sugar returned to her introverted self. Emily, Amanda and Sheila did a lot of stuff with Sugar to test her out and stuff. She was a great horse but there were 3 things that were real deal breakers.
- She had a very mild club foot, but a club foot none the less.
- An old injury on her right hind leg. The vet had said it didn't affect her gait but was still a worry none the less.
- Her age. She was 14 years old. Sheila was looking for a younger horse.
They discussed if she could be a project horse to resell, but her foot & old injury scratched out that idea.
It was with sadness that we had to put her back out into the field.
The barn manager then told us about another horse being for sale. We went to go look at her. (At this point I could really start to feel the missing breakfast) She was a very large paint mare. (Large as in..wide!)
She had Salita's face (who is Indy's foal! Well now she is a big girl but still) and Sheila's horse Sue's body.
Well then!
At this point I was sort of...zoning out. I was developping a head ache.
After a bit we decided to go because we were all getting a bit crabby from not eating. The barn manager gave Shiela the horse's owner's number and we left. Straight back to Cracker Barrel to eat some late lunch! It was already just past 2pm.
We had spent 5 hours looking at 2 horses. Wow.
On our way back home, my headache got really bad so we waited a bit before going out to the stables. But it passed after about an hour. But we didn't do much because I still wasn't feeling too hot. I watched Katie jump and stuff. It was fun because Emily's friends from "The Harry Potter Expedition" were there!!
There you go Emily, a lovely long post! :)
The other posts should be coming along soon enough! :)
~Julia
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