Busy busy!

Been a hectic few days around these parts.....I have acquired a new horse which I have not seen in person. A good friends' horse was mauled by dogs and may not survive, or ever be sound. The big wind storm took out my hay tent, along with some trees. My farm hydrant is still down for the count. And I am back at work by myself for the winter months.

I'll just start by explaining how the horse came to be.

On Monday night, pretty late, I happened to check a local Yahoo! group, and quickly scanned the posts there. One that caught my eye was a plea to place a couple of horses rescued. Included were one sentence descriptions on the two, and a brief recount of the rescue. I responded, asking the poster to call me the next morning. As I tried to sleep that night, I reminded myself that rescue should not be just what I talk about, it should be what I *do*.

So the next morning I get the call, and a lengthy conversation ensues. The story goes like this: The gal has seen an ad on Craigslist for a horse trailer. The ad mentioned two horses, as an afterthought. She got a buddy to come along for the drive, and hoped to cut a good deal on a project trailer she could work on fixing up over the winter. Upon arrival, she saw the two horses without water and no hay anywhere. The trailer was pretty much what she was looking for, but the horses needed immediate help-they were in very poor condition. She managed to cut a deal for the package, using rent money to save the horses. (Hey, I would have done the same thing)

With a lot of time and effort, she managed to get the horses hauled into Anchorage, where they remain at this time. There was a mare and a gelding. Mare is somewhere in the mid teens, gelding 6 and registered. She described her ordeal to me, and I just said I would buy the gelding, sight unseen. Further conversation revealed that I had actually spoken to the owner about the horses sometime back in August (I think?) and I had gotten such a twang on my antenna I wasn't comfortable going out there by myself.

Later that day I got photos emailed, and my heart about broke in two. The mare is about a condition score two-which is very serious. The gelding is slightly better, about a 3 on the Henneke scale, although if I had my hands on him, I would be more accurate. The owner literally thought that the horses were in fine shape (!!!) and perfectly healthy. (Yeah well just because they are on their feet, don't make it that way!) They have probably not seen a farrier in almost a year, from the looks of things. The two gals doing the rescuing went ahead and wormed them-something I would not have done myself for a number of weeks-but they seem to have survived that okay.

So there you go, I now have a 6 yo Appaloosa gelding, lineage unkown, training unknown, who is somewhere around 14.3 hands......