Woo! Divas, I'm getting a horse!

[Serafina]

This is so cool! (and it is also terrifying) But soon I will be Horse Mama to a big, sweet, obliging, sensitive, well-mannered, and experienced (18 years young) chestnut Warmblood. I've been riding him for lessons for the last month, and he's on the market. We had the vet check yesterday and he passed it with flying colors - no weirdness at all except for what you'd expect from an 18 yo former pro jumper. Good hooves, good joints, good eyes, good hair, good bones. So now, basically, it's just a matter of writing a bunch of checks and doing some paperwork (and coordinating the new supply of supplements, buying tack, etc etc etc).

I really lucked into this guy, and my trainer (who is the barn owner and also the person who owns the horse right now) is thrilled because she loves him too and is very happy to have someone else paying his bills while she still gets to enjoy him.



Now I'm learning all about tack. Good grief, I thought skiing equipment was complicated! It is NOTHING compared to tack! I did just order a set of fresh grooming brushes and a new hoof pick, and a tack bucket to go with it. It is purple and shaped like a heart. My outer 44 year old says this will make it easy to identify in the tack room. My inner 10 year old says OOH! A PURPLE HEART!

 

[NewEnglandSkier]

Congrats on your first horse purchase! He sounds really nice and it's great that you already have experience with him. This is an exciting time. As you are finding out already, once you own a horse there is so much to buy and you will always need something else! Enjoy your new horse and all the gear shopping that is to come!

 

[VickiK]

Sounds wonderful. Congratulations! Maybe you can post a picture to show him off?

 

[Serafina]

I will totally be posting pictures of him! Probably HUNDREDS of them! I can hardly believe that all of those birthday candles I've blown out over the years are paying off, at last!

I just have to remember to take my camera to the barn. That will be soon, too. He is a weird shape to fit - he has this whacking huge warmblood barrel, but his withers are high, and because he's older, they're a little on the thin side, too. I had a pow-wow with Dover on the subject of Where To Start on this one...they said I should take pictures and make a wither tracing, and send it all in to them so they can help me pick out a saddle to try.

Fortunately, they sent complete directions on how to do this wither tracing. Even better, he's likely to stand still for me while I'm doing that.

 

[ski now work later]

What's his name?

 

[contesstant]

Welcome to the disease of horse ownership :D
I'm so sick with it, I have spent thousands this year in training and show fees and now am getting ready to spend thousands more attempting to win a U.S. National title with my horse. (We had a really good year showing with some BIG wins!)

My poor husband.

It's a never-ending vortex of money but the satisfaction I get from it is like nothing else!

And it all started in 1976 with a chestnut mare :D So congratulations and ENJOY!!! And prepare your bank account!!

 

[num]

Congratulations! Can't wait to see pics.

 

[Serafina]

It's easier to just link into my blog than mess with photobucket. So...here's HUEY! (Serafina is my middle name, this blog is the one I use more commonly)

He will be All Mine as of October 1. I'm rapid-cycling between really excited, and terrified!

Contesstant - do you guys do dressage? I remember seeing a picture, but I can't remember the discipline. You guys looked awesome together in the pic, so BEST of luck on the competition! US National...wow. I can't even imagine entering a little show down at some local farm. Especially not after a morning like today, where I was trying out a bit on him and got so involved with the bridle...that I forgot to saddle him up first. That's when my trainer (who is the barn owner and the seller of this horse) said "So, you excited?"

The money vortex is starting. I've got his grooming bucket, and a list of the other stuff (a LONG list), and now that I have his wither tracing, I can open a discussion with Dover to figure out which saddle to try on him.

<breathe> <breathe> <breathe>

 

[NewEnglandSkier]

He's so cute! His coloring/markings reminds me a lot of one of my former horses.

 

[Serafina]

Thanks! My husband hasn't met him yet, and I just got home to find him sneaking peeks at the pictures. I asked why he didn't wait for me to get here, and he said he just *couldn't* wait. He also said Huey was much cuter than he expected - I guess he thought I had New Mom Jello Brain.

 

[ski now work later]

I've ridden Huey a few times, very nice gelding. Congrats!

 

[Serafina]

Hey SNWL,

I remember you're up in the hilltowns - I hope you didn't take on too much damage with the storm! I know there were a lot of washouts in the region. I think Goshen and a few other hilltowns were declared as part of the disaster region.

Have you ridden Huey? Where? Incredibly, my trainer found him at auction last winter! Vet said his joints suggested that he's spent a lot of time jumping, and it looks like he's had at least one significant injury (a few broken teeth and an old, healed fractured shin splint). My trainer thinks he can't have spent a huge amount of time as a lesson horse, because he's way more sensitive to the aids than you'd expect from a lesson horse. But other than that, his past is a mystery to us.

If you know something about his past, I'd love to hear it (PM me if you don't want to post it here). I don't hold it against his former owners (whoever they may be) for turfing him out to auction because if they hadn't, I wouldn't have lucked into him, and *luck* it definitely is. My trainer sure wasn't at the auction looking for warmbloods, she wanted a trail horse (and got one) but when she saw Huey, she said she could tell that this was really a Special horse that just needed some TLC and time - and by golly, she was right. When I'm in the market again - after the sad moment when I inevitably have to say "goodbye" to him - I'm totally taking my trainer to help me find another horse.

Anyway, he's got his Forever Home now, and I couldn't be happier!

S

 

[ScottishGirlie]

Huey is gorgeous! Congrats!

 

[altagirl]

I've ridden Huey a few times, very nice gelding. Congrats!

How's that for a Ski Diva coincidence!

And I know nothing about horses, but he sure looks beautiful to me!

 

[ski now work later]

I used to ride at Fox Meadow (Smith College's barn) and I assumed that your Huey was the same Huey I rode there, but I suppose there could be two Hueys in the Northampton area!

We fared fine in the storm, thanks. Lost power for about an hour, staying home and inside all day. Thanks for askin!

 

[Bumblebee]

Are you planning on riding western or english?

For my high-withered but narrow wb I've got a couple of stubben scandicas (VSS and Dressage), both are width 27 I believe. Being stubben of course they know how to fit a wb - any German saddlers too of course, although not cheap.

Congrats on your new purchase though from one chestnut wb owner to another.

 

[Serafina]

I've been learning hunt seat, but I think I want to move into dressage. I get enough of a rush from skiing so while I'd like to try jumping, I don't think I want to do much of it. And the vet said it would be best if I didn't take my new boy over jumps > 1 foot.

And both the vet and my trainer think he'd make a really sweet dressage mount. They think his conformation and movement are right for that. My trainer says he's already got a lot of what he'd need for dressage, he would just need to learn to connect...I don't remember exactly what she said, but the way I interpreted it and remember it is that he's got to connect his front half and his back half. I understand very little of what I've written in this paragraph, I'm just repeating what I remember other people saying, but the general thrust of the discussions has been "yes, he would be a good horse for dressage" - I'm taking the rest on faith that I can actually learn this, and so can he. I do know that he listens magnificently to my seat, and will actually bend in a nice circle without any real input from my reins, only pressure from my seat. I think this is a good sign for a future in dressage??

I drove into Boston yesterday with my shiny little wither tracing, and sat down with the staff at the tack shop my trainer really likes. They are going to send someone who Understands saddle fitting (although is not a certified saddle fitter) out to the barn with a selection of saddles and saddle pads, etc.

I told them about his withers, and they said oh, yes, of course, etc. but when I brought out his wither tracing, they all fell into awestruck silence. At first they thought I must have taken the tracing from too high up his neck, so I showed them a picture I took of him with the flexible curve on. Nope, I took it in the right place...one of them said, in hushed tones, "Oh my gosh, and they go even HIGHER."



They did measure and everything - it looks like he's going to need a very wide tree, and maybe a sheepskin thingy or one of those corrective saddle pads with the shims in. They said that the Saddle Person would be able to sort all that out.

I, on the other hand, turn out to be a different kind of problem. He's in a borrowed saddle at the moment, and I really, really hate it. If I'm not super careful, I wind up bouncing my butt on the cantle - and to avoid that, I have to close up my hip angle...but if I go to far on that, my crotch lands squarely on the pommel. ouch.

It's too small, for one - it's a 17.5, and yesterday's try-outs made it clear that I need an 18 or an 18.5. And I have very long legs, so the flaps don't work for me at all. My knees aren't behind the blocks, they're on top of them, which makes it *really* interesting to put a leg on.

I thought I wanted an all-purpose saddle because I would like to do a little jumping, a little hacking, and some dressage...but all of the eventing saddles they had in stock gave me the same trouble. I gather that if I'm really committed to having an all-purpose saddle, I'd probably want to get custom flaps. ouch. The good news is that the dressage saddles - the ones in the right seat size - felt GREAT.

This saddle thing is going to be a real trip!

 

[Bumblebee]

I'm sorry as I really don't want to be preaching to the choir, but a saddle should fit. Making it fit with pads, liners,gel pads etc is a bit like saying your ski boots will fit if you roll up a sock and place it in the toe. I'm glad they're sending someone out! Tbh from the pics, he doesn't look that high withered and it worries me a little that he's not being sold with tack. If this fitter can't do it, get another in! I got my VSS fitted when she was 4 and it will stay with her for life.

Wrt bouncing from cantel to pommel - an hour on the lunge without stirrups or reins will cure that! ;)

 

[Bumblebee]

Ok, I went back and looked at your pics, he is high-withered, however given his conformation (best seen in final pic) a Dressage saddle sitting well behind his shoulder so as not to impede movement, would also sit back off the withers. The withers are not the strongest part of the spine (check pics of skeleton) and lots of people have the saddle far too forward, even in Europe where English saddles are the norm. Check out the shoulder rather than just withers. Phew! Lecture over.

 

[Serafina]

No worries on the lecture - I'm just learning about all of this stuff, and from what everyone who's seen him has said, he's a tricky fit...which just means I'm going to need to learn a bunch of extra stuff!

The gals at the saddle shop think his shoulders are pretty huge (I took a separate set of pics to take to the saddle shop, but I only posted the cute ones on my site - so they were looking at different pics of him, more full-body and front/back shots).

My trainer bought him last winter to see if he'd be any good in the lesson program. He can do that, and has been doing it, but it's obvious that he does a lot better when he's got fewer riders - he is pretty sensitive to the aids, and of course, he loses a lot of that when he's got a bunch of riders all at different skill levels. So, because he's going to be a challenging fit, she didn't want to invest a whacking huge sum in tack until she knew whether he'd work out, which is why he's in a borrowed saddle (it was the only one around that would fit him). Then, somewhere in there, she decided that it would be best for *him* if she could line up a good single-rider home, and at that point, it also didn't make sense to sink bucks into tack. So that's why he's being sold without it - he does have a well-fitting bridle and a bit that he really likes, and those items are coming with him...just not the saddle (which I wouldn't want anyway, since it's about an inch too small).

I agree, the saddle ought to fit without a bunch of tinkering and weird pads, but then again, this guy is 18 years old (and he's pretty fit now, the vet gave him a body condition score of 6), and he doesn't get worked in the winter because there isn't an indoor ring, so my assumption is that he's going to lose a fair amount of condition over the winter and then get it back a little more slowly because he's older...and that a saddle that fits him perfectly in July will not, in fact, fit him perfectly in March. Seems to me that the saddle pad with the removable shims could be a good solution to keeping his saddle comfortable while he's getting worked back into shape in the spring. I don't have one yet, so I'm totally open to input on this!