The Horse Report

OH, this horse was a looker.  Mama was CMK nice, nice arabian.  This gelding was the nicest horse I've looked at.  He looked like the old bloodline arabians.  But as the music implies...   I darned near did bite it.  I spoke with the owner, found out when he was ridden last which was a week ago.  First clue was in cross ties Doug attempted a pulse and the horse just went into a panic.  So he just backed off and the owner quieted him down.  I went onto tacking the horse up, walk around to the off side and he sees me there and again panics in the cross ties and my saddle heads to ground, and I catch it (thank you Lord for saving the trusty crestridge saddle).  Horse again settles in and I finish saddling.  Owner assures me horse has never reared, bucked, or bolted, and has never unloaded anyone.   I'm a trusting soul.  I point him away from the barn, and settle up and into the saddle real quiet like.  Away we go!  He gives a real good attempt at bucking.  I'd have one-reined him in, but she has him rigged up in a martingale contraption, so much for that.  His gait is actually a pace.  It was pretty comfortable.  Horse is worried about his pasture mates, worried about me, and very worried about my hubby.  He spots him along the fenceline and nearly dumps me with a big sideways spook.  Doug asks if I want to rate the speed of his gait with the garmin, uh.....no, I don't think so.  The owner thought that perhaps the level II parelli trained horse was unsettled because of my propensity for patting on the horse.  Huh?  Horses should be stroked, not patted, they find it upsetting.  Poor Phebes and Cree, their life must be truly miserable because I slap 'em on the butt every time they come in or out of the barn, their ears don't even twitch.  I'm beginning to think that I could NEVER sell Phebes as she is so highly trained (in comparison to the horses I've looked at and ridden so far) that nobody could possibly afford to buy her.  I'm thinking I should ask about $20,000.00 because she can indeed, be quietly saddled, mounted, walk, trot, and canter without killing me for the most part, can be tied with a lowly lead rope, load and unload, have her pulse taken, and her ears clipped, and she's so bombproof I can pat her whenever I want to, and during fly season she will run to me to be heartily slapped in order to mash a horse fly. Her only vice is motorized vehicles and horse killing sticks!  But I digress. 

Just for the sake of making the five hour round trip at least interesting (and because I suspected the outcome and I'm just sometimes evil...), I asked her to load him into the horse trailer.  She did finally get him in with a whole lot of cajoling, and then she tried again, and it took a whole lot more cajoling, she's doing it the parelli way I'm told and she says the horse had a trailer loading accident once and isn't fond of the horse trailer.  I really, really....should not have got on him at all. He was gorgeous! But another one bites the dust. ~ E.G.