I wasn't exactly looking for a second horse, but my sanity was slowly waning with the whole not-able-to-ride-for-unknown-amount-of-time-while-Griffin-grew-up. I had decided to go to a weekend horsemanship clinic and trail ride with my local riding club. Friends that knew the cowboy doing the clinic assured me that he would have a horse I could ride. They told me it might even be an Arabian, my childhood dream horse.
I was able to pick her out from all the others when we arrived on the farm. I'd never seen an Arabian with markings quite like that so I questioned myself (many paint horses on the property for penning, maybe she was just a paint with odd conformation for the breed?). But lo and behold, cowboy man pulled her out for me to "test ride" the night before our clinic and big trail ride, and she was the little horse I'd noticed in the paddock.
Bottom line behind the whole weekend - I was set up. My friends knew me too well! This little girl was for sale and I had a whole weekend to test-drive her in front of multiple horse professionals who were my friends. A couple of vets, multiple trainers, an endurance rider, and other lifetime horse lovers and owners all encouraged me to get this little girl. After deliberating over it for two nights, I'd decided I would do it.
A 2006 model, 14.1½hh, a mare, and un-papered (at least to my knowledge; her history was quite a mystery) she wasn't exactly the 15hh+ Arabian gelding I had dreamed of one day getting. She was very much the opposite. The only category she fell into that I'd wanted was a bay horse with some chrome.
She rode like a dream that whole weekend. She side passed during the clinic, backed up like a champ, would flex to her left and her right, move her forehand or hind end with subtle leg cues, and to top if off she was eager and forward moving on the trail, had a floating trot, and a ground-eating canter- and she demonstrated a few well balanced jumps over logs to boot! I'd found my endurance prospect.
Additionally, our trail ride at her former home (where someone had abandoned her to the cowboy because they didn't want her anymore supposedly) was in the company of a stud horse while she was in red-hot heat. She did no more than pin her ears at him and other horses on the ride the whole time. She was an angel compared to most mares I know when they are in heat. That was the breaking point on my deep-down debate as to whether or not I truly loved this horse and wanted her.
She's become quite the accomplished endurance horse in our short time together. She's tackled each 50 I've thrown at her with grace, albeit some spookiness, the Arab way? (sigh) Her only pulls so far have been at no fault of hers. Poor luck served the first pull, and poor planning served the second. Lameness on both counts, the first due to a minor fall and resulting cut on her leg, the second due to cooling temperatures and a crampy rear end that was resolved within an hour after the pull.
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