I Use To Have a Gelding. And He Was The Best.

Such a sweet boy.

  Total Tenacity was my heart horse. He was also my first horse. The 15.3 red breeding stock paint gelding had four perfect white socks and a blaze shaped like a fatty sword pointed towards his nose. He was halter bred, handsome, and looked an awful lot like his daddy. I thought he was perfect.

Yep. All fat and muscle.

Booger was to be mine, and I never thought that was to happen. I was cleaning stalls at the barn I was riding at when I saw this new horse in one of the stalls. His nose was so sunburned, it was cracked open and about 1/2 inch deep. The next thing I did was buy some sunscreen and aloe vera gel, and every day I applied it to his nose. He was so damn cute. It healed up so nicely, and that was that. My friend knew I was looking for a horse to call my own. She knew he was for sale. For a 14 year old girl looking for her first horse, we were thinking something nice and broke. A "been there done that".

Booger was two. But we lined up a test ride anyways, because, why not. Our first ride was at night in the covered arena. There was some spooking at the white horse running around in the adjacent pasture, and a little buck when I asked for the lope. But he was so smooth. And it felt just right.

We didn't have funds for fancy clothes or tack.

His owner would pick me up from school, and I would ride him around. After about six rides, my grandma bought him for me. I was ecstatic. I ran around the neighborhood yelling "I HAVE A HORSE! HE IS ALL MINE!" Two weeks after he was fully paid off, my 4H leader said she could trim his feet for us. She did. And the next day my horse was dead lame on all four. She told me it was just from all of the circulation he was getting to his feet now because his shoes were pulled off.

I'm just a good little horse.

Um, no. He no longer had any heel left. His legs were three times their size and filled with fluid. He could barely walk. We called a vet out, and he did all kinds of things. Nothing worked. We drained his legs (watching orange fluid pour out of your first horse's legs is a little horrifying) and I would scrub them with betadine every day. Everything scabbed over so he couldn't even bend anything to walk. I would cry and cry. Finally, a farrier pointed out he thought it looked an awful lot like scratches now. We called a different vet out ( a very very old vet) and he gave us an ointment, antibiotics, and some other instructions. After 3 days, I couldn't believe the results. He looked wonderful! After two weeks, he was almost as good as new.

My brother learning the ropes of playing in ponds.

The first time I was able to turn him out in months, he galloped and bucked and spun. And I was so happy. After that we did everything. We played with cows, we tried to jump things, we went on trail rides, played polo, did jousting events, just everything. Pretty awesome for a young little horse with his young little owner. We did have one big spill. My mom was in Idaho for the first time ever, and I wanted to show off how we could gallop through the pasture. Well, he bucked and tripped at the same time and flipped. I obviously didn't stay on. He got up and stood over me, and I stumbled up and just leaned on him until I could kind of see. My mom was like a bat out of hell.

Such a fun horse.

To be continued....