It wasn’t love at first sight.
When I first saw the tall, leggy mahogany bay Thoroughbred gelding I thought he was kind of cute, though skinny. And I thought it was a pity that his blaze was so asymmetrical, sliding off to one side of his face.
I was no longer too excited when I went to look at horses, because by then I felt I had looked at every big lame horse in Colorado. Why do people even bother to show horses for sale that are obviously lame? Do they think it won’t be noticed?
In this case the owner had brought the horse by the barn where we were boarding Rags. He was immaculately groomed, and seemed very calm for a Thoroughbred. He also seemed alert, so I doubt he had been drugged. In retrospect, though, I suspect he had already been worked hard at least once that day. And probably had been worked hard every day for the previous week. Maybe the previous month.
The owner started riding him around the arena. I liked the way he moved, though I was a little concerned that he carried his head with a slight twist. After she walked, trotted and cantered the horse around the arena for a while, and even jumped a few small obstacles, she asked me if I wanted to try him.
She was a tiny woman, so we had to put a saddle on the gelding that would fit me. I mounted with a certain sense of caution. From my point of view, one of the worst parts of the horse buying process was having to ride strange horses, sometimes even without a proper introduction.
Within five minutes of trotting and cantering around the arena, I was at war with myself. One part of me was trying to stay objective and cool about this horse. The twist had me worried, because I knew that this sort of thing could be hard to fix in a horse. I also wasn’t all that keen on getting a Thoroughbred. My original guideline to the woman who was acting as my agent had been “Anything but a Thoroughbred, anything but a gray.” I had only reluctantly started looking at Thoroughbreds since we had been coming up dry with other breeds.
The other part of me was saying, “This is my horse. This is MY horse. THIS IS MY HORSE!”
I asked my friend D who was there watching if she would ride the horse, because I wanted to see if she could fix the twist. She couldn’t, but said later that the running martingale on the horse interfered with using the direct rein which might have helped. I also took the horse on a short trail ride, and I cantered him beside D on her big Thoroughbred Havoc. (D was not yet my trainer, but she already had a knack for keeping me calm in situations that would normally worry me. Cantering a strange Thoroughbred in the open was guaranteed to worry me.)
The cool, objective part of me told the owner that I wanted to talk to my agent, and of course we would want a pre-purchase exam if we decided to buy him. The cool, objective part of me knew it was folly to bond to the horse before a vet had even seen him. The other part of me wanted to give her a check on the spot, so she wouldn’t put MY HORSE in her trailer and take him away.
After a very long eight days, Hap came home. At least he wasn’t a gray.