A brief catch up

I have been a bad Blogger again. So much to do and so little time. Actually it still takes me twice as long to do even the most simple of tasks some days.

The bad luck fairy appears to have no finished with us and we had to deal with the horrible news that our lovely colt foal had to be humanely destroyed after becoming hung up in a fence.

So we indulged in a bit of retail therapy and bought the cute as a button and ever so slightly cheeky, Alfie.
He is an 12 yr old standardbred who hasn't done a whole lot in his life. We needed an older, established horse that Charlie and I could ride as we really only have Trix now. Juno being the only other broken in horse, but she is too young to be doing much still.

And as it so often happens, that night we got a phone call to say another horse we had inquired about, was actually still available. Being quite close, we decided to go and look anyway, as much out of curiosity as we wondered just what did a 1/2 Friesian 1/2 standardbred look and go like.
He certainly had a lovely walk, and trot but something niggled at me and I asked the girl riding him (selling on behalf of the owner) if he paced when pressured. Sure enough he did. She then put him into a canter and what a mess it was. Legs in all directions. But just the kind of horse we liked really as he could even develop an amble if encouraged.
So long story short, we paid a small amount of money for him, but what seemed a fair price for what we had seen.

Well, today, I have spoken to his breeder, and the woman who bought him as a youngster, did most of his early work with him etc before selling him on.
Our bargain basement horse, was sold for a considerable amount of money, used to have good paces and has actually done quite a bit for a 6 yr old. At some stage, he appears to have his movement shut down by an owner (reportedly with draw reins) which could have lead to the loss of the canter which never used to be as bad as what I saw.

He should have had quite a big future by all accounts and now he has ended up here. Now we can't wait for him to get back up to a proper weight, grow out his pulled tail and turn back into the horse he used to be.