Horses!

Oh, my goodness! Where to start? Well, we finally got the front pasture refenced with electric braided rope, sprayed for weeds and the majority of the unused stalls cleared of their bedding. We transferred all of the bedding into one stall and will pull from there until it's gone. Each stall had roughly four inches of bedding on top of rubber matting. We are able to use the bedding that was inside the barn, but the bedding that was outside was unusable. Jeremy hooked up the manure spreader and spread it lightly on the back pasture and we used some of it in the compost bins and as footing in the garden walkways. So, we figure now we're ready for horses and our journey begins.

Monday afternoon we went to a local rescue shelter, Diamonds in the Rough, with our neighbor to see if we could find a companion/light rider for me. They had roughly 30 adoptable horses, but we only looked closely at three. One was a mare named Zoey, the second was another mare named Lady and the third was a gelding named Frosty. We all fell in love with Frosty. He's a Tennessee Walker, 17 years old, and about 15 hands. My neighbor loves him because he's gaited. He has at least four gaits, and possibly five. He's ridable and only has some minor issues that can be fixed with consistent riding and work. I called yesterday to set up a time to go back to ride him and was told that 1)someone else was coming to look at him on Saturday and 2)the trainer was going to be there at 1pm. I quickly called the neighbor and we headed out to see him again and ride him.

We quickly decided he was the one and put the deposit down on him. He's getting his feet done on Friday and will be delivered to our house Saturday. We can't wait! We have a 30-day trial on him and if he works out we'll pay the remainder of the adoption fee and he will be ours. This rescue facility is well respected in our area and has already had him checked by a vet, his feet done every six weeks, teeth floated and he's up-to-date on all his shots. They have an open-book policy and we'll be able to see all of their records for him, including anything that was passed along from the previous owners.

To top it all off, we possibly found a great horse for Samantha as well. The rescue shelter also has a regular boarding barn and they have a ten-year-old Thoroughbred mare whose owner doesn't have time for her any more. They are contacting her now to see if she would be willing to either sell her outright or give us a free lease on her with the option to purchase at a set price. This would be so perfect. She has a ton of potential and normally would cost us a ton of money. We're praying it works out. If so, we'll have two horses delivered on Saturday.

Samantha and I spent last night cleaning the tack room and utility room and setting up the stalls we chose for our horses. We still have some work to do, but it's coming along. We're going to spend this morning visiting the different tack shops in the area to get our necessary supplies.