Horse shopping #1 a wash.
Mar. 10th, 2019 07:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickHorse #1 was reasonably close (in-state, about an hour's drive distant) and very reasonably-priced. However, when we got there, it became apparent that she was not the horse for me.
The horse I am shopping for is a filly, that's on purpose. I have owned and ridden mares. I own and ride a gelding. I want another filly, not another gelding. So there's that.
This filly was not what I'm looking for. (The things I am looking for are not exactly apparent in pictures. I have to meet and handle the horse a little. I need a personality I can work with. Horses last, if you're lucky, upwards of twenty years. You should REALLY LIKE the one you get.)
The filly in question had not been handled extensively (this is not a dealbreaker) and the handling that she had gotten wasn't particularly useful (also not a dealbreaker). She was stall-kept and fed pretty high (not my favorite, but not the end of the world). And on being let out of her stall for the twenty or so minutes of 'turnout' that she got in the double-wide barn aisle per day, she bombed around for two minutes and then was relatively settled down.
Her bombing was athletic and careful, with smooth lead changes and nice, hock-using turns. For a horse who is stall-kept, she handles herself fairly well. She's not as reach-y in the front end as I would have liked, but some of that, I think, is not-being-outside. She had a fair turn of speed for a woefully unfit stall-kept filly.
She led. Not well, but well enough. She was polite-ish in terms of her handle around people. She could be persuaded to let me touch her ears in about four tries. While she clearly hadn't been handled on the off side much, she let me be over there without a hideous amount of fight. This was a very kind, very sensible little horse who was not trying to hurt anyone but who lacks clear boundaries. I would have her spit-n-polished in a week.
She would pretty easily bend to whatever I wanted, not a whole lot of temper in there, relatively long fuse, easy to persuade to my way of thinking. Clever enough (taught her to back up in about six tries) but not... Nicknick or Peakely smart. Not the thing I am looking for.
She's a nice little filly. She will make someone a nice horse. She is not the horse for me.
This sounds like I'm looking for an asshole of a horse. I'm not... exactly. I want a horse who is smarter than this one, a horse who actively thinks through problems, who is a touch more reactive (had a baby Nicknick been kept stalled and handled this way, she'd be climbing the walls and trying to hurt people) and has views, opinions, and a blazingly apparent amount of personality. Also athletic, clean movement, etc.
I don't want much.
We'll be shopping for a while, I think. *sigh*
The horse I am shopping for is a filly, that's on purpose. I have owned and ridden mares. I own and ride a gelding. I want another filly, not another gelding. So there's that.
This filly was not what I'm looking for. (The things I am looking for are not exactly apparent in pictures. I have to meet and handle the horse a little. I need a personality I can work with. Horses last, if you're lucky, upwards of twenty years. You should REALLY LIKE the one you get.)
The filly in question had not been handled extensively (this is not a dealbreaker) and the handling that she had gotten wasn't particularly useful (also not a dealbreaker). She was stall-kept and fed pretty high (not my favorite, but not the end of the world). And on being let out of her stall for the twenty or so minutes of 'turnout' that she got in the double-wide barn aisle per day, she bombed around for two minutes and then was relatively settled down.
Her bombing was athletic and careful, with smooth lead changes and nice, hock-using turns. For a horse who is stall-kept, she handles herself fairly well. She's not as reach-y in the front end as I would have liked, but some of that, I think, is not-being-outside. She had a fair turn of speed for a woefully unfit stall-kept filly.
She led. Not well, but well enough. She was polite-ish in terms of her handle around people. She could be persuaded to let me touch her ears in about four tries. While she clearly hadn't been handled on the off side much, she let me be over there without a hideous amount of fight. This was a very kind, very sensible little horse who was not trying to hurt anyone but who lacks clear boundaries. I would have her spit-n-polished in a week.
She would pretty easily bend to whatever I wanted, not a whole lot of temper in there, relatively long fuse, easy to persuade to my way of thinking. Clever enough (taught her to back up in about six tries) but not... Nicknick or Peakely smart. Not the thing I am looking for.
She's a nice little filly. She will make someone a nice horse. She is not the horse for me.
This sounds like I'm looking for an asshole of a horse. I'm not... exactly. I want a horse who is smarter than this one, a horse who actively thinks through problems, who is a touch more reactive (had a baby Nicknick been kept stalled and handled this way, she'd be climbing the walls and trying to hurt people) and has views, opinions, and a blazingly apparent amount of personality. Also athletic, clean movement, etc.
I don't want much.
We'll be shopping for a while, I think. *sigh*
no subject
Date: 2019-03-11 03:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-03-11 05:01 pm (UTC)So, I want a good fit, a horse I will like not just the day I go to buy her, but a horse I will like for the entirety of our time together. That's a tall order. Though they were only double-oughts*, Nicknick left some seriously big shoes to fill.
*Like people, different horses have different sized feet. Horse shoes start at 000 or "triple aught" and go to 00 "double aught" and 0 "single aught" to 1, 2, and 3. The sizes probably go up from there but I ride Arabs and Arab crosses and honestly, 00, 0 and 1 cover all the shoe sizes I will ever need.
no subject
Date: 2019-03-11 09:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-03-12 03:30 am (UTC)Bird is a good boy, mostly. Clinicians tell me "This is a horse that would be easy to ruin but you're doing a fine job with him" and "You should give him more credit -- he comes in ready to work for you every time." I think they feel like I am not sufficiently fond of him or something. I dunno. I do not find him difficult in the slightest. Compared to Nick, he's a relatively good-natured and pleasant sort.
Bird is, in several ways, easier to deal with than my dead horse Nick ever was.
He settles down quickly in new locations, where she was constantly fretful about danger and took like two hours or three to start eating from her haynet after she was unloaded. It's not a problem to get Bird to eat or drink when we're out and about.
Nick was permanently suspicious in a way that Bird just isn't. He's more willing to believe me when I tell him it's OK and more willing to give things a try when I ask him to do them.
He lacks Nick's fierce intelligence. She was so, so smart. He's clever but he's not like she was.
He lacks her temper (which makes him easier to deal with) -- Nick had a number of things on which she was "Aw HELL no" and really that was the end of the debate. Maybe someone else could have won... I could not. So we negotiated a peace.
He lacks her work ethic. Nick would work till she dropped. Not because she had 'no brakes' or similar. I mean "Mare would work HARD to understand what you wanted, even if you were less-than-skillfully asking for haunches-in and only rewarding about a third of the time and that with poor timing because you weren't sure what you were looking for or what it felt like." Most horses would explode before you got very far with that OR shut down and ignore the hell out of you. But Nick... would try like hell to understand you and she'd GET it and then she'd be super, super proud of herself.
Bird is not the horse that Nick was. He is his own horse and he's allowed to be that. A new horse won't be the same as Nick, either, and that's just as well. I'm pretty sure I don't want to take quite as many spills at near-fifty as I did when I was in my early thirties.
There exist other horses in this world that I will like quite well who are not Nick. And, while I am terribly sad about Patapsco, having her be "Nick's Baby" was no guarantee that I would have loved her like I loved Nick.
For what it's worth, Peake is also Nick's baby. She's 10. I'm quite familiar with her. I fed her through her weanling and yearling years, started her under saddle, and rode her for her first thirty rides or so. Peake is quite arguably a better, nicer mare than her mother. She is taller, classier, has massively smoother gaits, is kinder and more sensible, generally goes along to get along, is 100% traffic safe and jumps what she is aimed at without a ration of shit. Peake is quite a nice mare. I don't hate her or anything, far from it, but I don't LOVE her. I believe we will send Peake up to the stud this spring to see what we can get out of her, but she herself is not the horse for me.
no subject
Date: 2019-03-12 04:22 am (UTC)