Mister

Next up - Mister

Well, really his barn name is Mister Horse. I couldn't let my boyfriend name him Horse so I stuck Mister on there and that's what I call him. He's a registered 4 year old Quarter Horse gelding. We picked him up at an auction and he is our project horse that all too frequently gets ignored. Funny story about him...my BF has always insisted that he isn't a fan of bays. If you are going to have a bay, then it just looks silly if they have white on their face. They have to be solid bay. I swear we had that discussion on the long drive to the auction. So when he called to tell me he had purchased a horse and that I was going to laugh at him when I saw the horse I was intrigued. But first, the story of the auction and why he had to call me to tell me he had purchased a horse...

We got down there Friday evening for the 3 day sale. We walked thru the pens and checked out the horses that were there, made notes on ones not to bid on for various reasons and ones that we were interested in to. We watched some of the horses go thru the sale and took notes. We wanted to find out what sellers had reputations, good or bad, and anything else that could help ensure we get a good horse, not something doped up and crazy or lame.

Being at an auction went against everything I believe in when horse shopping! I admit that it is nice to see that many horses in one place and get it all over with, but I'm one that likes to take my time shopping, ask lots of questions, go out atleast a couple times, take the horse off the property, possibly to a drill practice or on a trail ride and get a good feel for the horse, the owner, the care and training it's had, everything I can. We did go down there with the attitude that we didn't HAVE to buy anything. But we had a 3 horse trailer with us. And it was an auction. Seriously, we were that naive. Besides that, this was to be the BF's horse so I was mostly just there for moral support and to help sort thru the hundreds of horses.

So after watching the Friday evening horses go thru we headed back to the hotel to formulate a game plan for the next day. We were going to go thru the book, mark the horses that interested us so that we could check them out in the pens before hand and then only bid on the horses that we had approved. Saturday morning we did just that. Except as the morning wore on I started to not feel so hot. I had to get out of the arena and get some fresh air. Turns out I had a nice little flu bug. I spent most of the rest of the day sleeping in the backseat of the truck, getting up only to go throw up behind the trailer or run to the portapotty. Ugh! I did make it in to check on the BF a couple times, see how he was doing, but I never lasted long in there. He had bid on a couple horses, but we had also set top dollars that we were willing to pay for them and they had all gone over. Finally around 5 pm I was totally sick of sleeping in the truck and felt like the major barfing fits had passed so I went in to see how BF was doing and told him I was going to head back to the hotel. He was going to stay for a while longer, he had a couple more horses going thru that he was interested in, so I was just going to come back later and get him. Well, about 8:30 I got the call. He had bought a horse and boy was I going to laugh when I saw him. He knew I'd like him. So I headed out to pick him up and check out this horse. It was really dark when I got there so I couldn't see the horse all that well, but I could definately see that he was bay and had a nice little blaze and the same white sock that Midori has. I did laugh at him. It has since become a joke that we can't buy a horse unless it has that little white sock. Upon closer inspection in the light on Sunday, we realized that he had a pretty gnarly club foot and a rather interesting shoe job, but other then that looked good. It also turns out that BF hadn't actually been able to check him out in the pens before he came thru the sale ring. He was flashy and did a nice stop and spin and lope so BF was sold. Oh well, a club foot isn't the end of the world, plus there was plenty of room to put a little time and tlc on this guy and turn him around if we choose. We weren't too worried about it.

When we brought Mister home, I was still boarding at the small barn that was just up the street from where we were living at the time. He would haul him up there and we would ride together a couple times a week. He was a nice enough horse, but we soon found out that he's a bit of a bucker. Not just little crow hoppy half assed bucks either. When I say he's a bucker I mean he could put the stock at rodeos to shame if he's feeling good. The BF first figured this out when he tried riding him at home on one of his days off. He got him tacked up and went to get on and barely had his leg over him when he spun around and took off bucking up the whole 10 acre property, dumping BF in a nice muddy puddle on his way. Oh man. The second time, we were riding at the barn. I was exercising one of the barn owners horses and heard a big commotion behind me. I looked back and he was loping, but it was not a very coordinated lope and with all the commotion the horse I was on started getting skittery. By the time I got her under control and turned around to see what was going on, BF was on the ground and Mister was running around the other side of the arena. Luckily BF bounces quite nicely and wasn't hurt. He got back on and Mister was fine the rest of the ride. He is also the most rock solid trail horse I've ever seen and a total dream on the ground. We figured out that it seemed like he just didn't quite understand how to lope period, let alone while packing some weight. We did lots of ground work with him, getting him comfortable moving in a circle and loping. I rode him when I had time and he was always good for me. He only thought about bucking on me once and he got as far as pretend spooking, ducking around the corner and going to drop his head before I got him pulled around. He was great for me other then that. Everything was going great until we got rid of the boarders in our pasture so I could bring Midori home, then I got busy with drill season, BF broke his leg and I got my Arab back from a lease and put her up for sale, on top of doing all the house and yard work and keeping my poor couch-bound BF company and helping him. Poor Mister got ignored. Then we got in to winter and poor Mister got ignored some more. Finally we decided that since I was not going to let BF back on him because his leg was still recovering and I just did not have time to ride him and Midori, we would put him in training, see if we could do something about the bucking. We found a trainer close by that sounded like he could handle it and get some good time on him, had a good reputation in my horsey circle of people and a decent place with healthy, happy looking horses and off he went. During this time, we had also decided that we wanted to start seriously looking into buying a house and since I had sold my Arab, we wanted to get another horse to. 3 just sounds like such a nice number of horses.

Mister came home from training still green, but doing well. Apparently he had the trainers number and bucked to high heaven with him, but when I rode him he was fine again. Maybe it's just guys he doesn't like. Or maybe it's heavier people. Who knows. If only horses could speak! While he was gone we had gotten another horse. Soon after he came home we found a house that we loved and made an offer on. I barely had time to ride Midori, let alone a greenie that possibly bucked so Mister got ignored some more. Anyways, I have a million excuses as to why no one has been on him in 6 months now and while they all seem totally legitimate to me, they are really just totally lame. I need to just suck it up and get on the poor thing. He loves his weekly grooming sessions and is always happy for a scratch when I feed. He is such a sweet heart and a total love bug with tons of personality. BF has talked about sending him packing more than once, but I won't let him. Not yet. I have a good feeling about him, just have to get past the crap.

Here he is enjoying sunbathing over the summer. He's such a goof ball!