Who really knows?

I know I haven't posted much lately on either blog about riding, driving or even the horses in general. Why is that? Well there are a number of reasons, one of which being time. Time to post, not much time to ride or drive and recently because a lot of things (life!) has been "a hot, sticky mess" (and not in a good way) that I haven't exactly wanted to share with the world. I just don't necessarily get into the whole idea of this being a blog about everything that happens in my life and all of the things wrong in the world or at least my little corner of it. No pity party or riding the whhhaaambulance here.

To be honest, when the girls and I moved to Houston back in February, horse and pony included, my mare didn't handle the trip all that well. Sure she was bred in Washington state and had traveled down to AZ to start her life as a race horse and after that didn't work out, she left the track to live with a new owner (K) who later sold her to (L) and she traveled from the Scottsdale/ Rio Verde area across town to Queen Creek to spend time there before I bought her. She made the short trip home with me 12 years ago this month, and pretty much never left. I did take her to a couple of schooling shows and had hauled her with Kat for those, but it was a short 20 minute trip on the road, 1 or 2 classes in hand and back home again. Nothing major, no big deal. For the most part she never left the property and she was comfortable there.

When traveling long distances, sometimes horses will go off their feed, they won't drink and they are on edge because they are stressed out about things. This was my mare. In the trailer, she didn't eat much and didn't drink at all the first day. I'm not sure if or how much she drank at the barn where I overnighted them, but it wasn't until late in the afternoon the following day on the road, that she finally began to drink again. By that point between not drinking, not eating and being stressed, she had dropped weight. I'm not going to guess how much, but it was enough that when we arrived and I got her off the trailer, her ribs were showing and it was pretty obvious.

We had gotten in late and after getting everything situated for the night, I fed and watered them one last time and went inside to bed myself. My mare tore up the grass in the back yard pretty good where she was obviously bouncing around quite a bit during the night. This didn't help with the weight loss either.

The next few months being at a new barn, my mare was quite wound to put it mildly. She paced in the stall and taking her out to lunge her or do anything really, she acted as if she had no respect for anything or anyone. Walking out to the grass area where I worked her, she tried to blow past me, circle around me, was constantly moving and never really quiet or relaxed.

She also had become Very attached to the pony. If I took him out, she literally wrecked the stall and screamed her head off the whole time he was out. If I took her out, she was constantly trying to look back to the stalls, get back to the stalls and screaming her head off the whole time. That shit gets old really fast. Even moving Kat to a different stall didn't help. He didn't care, but she never would settle down.

I had brought feed with me to hold them over long enough that I could not only find a feed store, but also to help transition the horses over to whatever new feed I found. I had a couple bales of alfalfa and several bags of alfalfa pellets. Finding a comparable and compatable feed to use- boy was I in for a surprise...