This time of year is hard for me: ghosts do not respect pleas for quiet or mercy. I mostly just hunker down & grit my teeth until it's over. To help pass the time, I want to share the next (
and mostly happy) part of the story...
I needed to find a more permanent friend for Solo & a project for me. There was so much I liked about the OTTB experience that was Encore that I wanted to do it again. My budget demanded that it had to be very green, but that was ok; my job is always getting more complex & I was in a mental & emotional place where I needed said project to involve small, slow steps.
Maybe it's just me, but horse shopping seems to get harder as you gain experience? Could be that I get pickier, but I noticed the market has become tougher as well. Prices were up significantly - when I got Encore, the OTTB resurgence wasn't quite under full steam yet. It is now, which is great for these horses & their sellers, just more difficult for me.
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I guess they can't all be this amazing |
I looked at a LOT of horses. Stories to share there too, that probably need their own space. Finances & time meant I couldn't travel very far either. Because I think quite a few people face these challenges, I'll offer this advice:
You can still find good horses out there for not-huge prices, but if you are working with extremely limited resources, like me, just prepare ahead of time that it's going to take a lot longer & require a lot of extra energy to hunt them down. A lot. It also helps to be naturally lucky. I am not naturally lucky.
I wish I had a better understanding of that beforehand. It was probably unreasonable of me to expect anything different, but if I was entirely reasonable all the time, well, how
much easier boring would that be?
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But I met a lot of super cute horses, like this one |
I'll skip ahead to the "fun" part. I say "fun" because I don't think it is possible to buy a horse without a hearty side helping of stress.
Which makes it doubly important to choose a horse that you REALLY REALLY like, because that will help you survive said stress.
After scouring both the real & virtual worlds, seeing some very nice but not quite what I wanted prospects, which even included bringing a horse home on trial (
alas, we found an ankle chip & he was returned, but he later found a great home), my eye caught on a young gelding who'd just arrived at
Benchmark Sporthorses.
It was funny because Benchmark is owned & run by the person, formerly of CANTER Mid-Atlantic, who saw Encore at Delaware Park & was involved in his let-down. I had emailed her when I started shopping, even though her prices (
which are very fair & well-deserved!) were a stretch, & often beyond, for me. The tradeoff was that I knew her & trusted her, she knew what kind of horse I liked, her stellar eye & reputation are, well, stellar, & she has built a network of high-quality contacts in the racing world which means the horses she gets are nice nice nice horses. Those things have a lot of value, especially if something Just Right comes along.
My checklist looked like this:
- MUST HAVE
- Gelding (Solo turns into an unbelievable jerk if he falls in love)
- 16 - 16.2 h (damn my freaky long legs, I wish I could fit ponies but also don't want giant)
- No greys (I like low-maintenance, but am also afraid of melanomas)
- Excellent brain with sense (priority A1A for both happiness & safety)
- Correct conformation with 3 correct gaits
- Age 3-10 (but would consider older, unlikely in my budget)
- WOULD REALLY LIKE
- I liked something with mileage on the track, I think that can show durability
- I loved my AP Indy horse (Encore's grandsire) & a lot of horses who have caught my eye since have been AP Indy horses, with that combination of sport horse build with sweet, good mind
The photo that snagged my attention belonged to a 2014 model who appeared to check all but one; he'd only raced 4 times (
terribly). I decided I could live with that, at least he had made it through training & out the gate without disaster (
so was trainable & probably not homicidal) & he had completed his last race with no known significant injuries. And it just so happened that he had AP Indy on BOTH sides of his pedigree - some things are good in double doses. He wasn't orange, but he was still dirt-colored.
And I saw A Look in his eye, an undefinable something that spoke to something in me. It said he might be Just Right.
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Not original sale photo, but it is the original face |
What came next can only be described as insanity. Unsurprisingly, I'm not the only person who knows Benchmark's qualities, which means that many of her horses are purchased sight unseen. Sometimes within 30 minutes. For that reason, she has an excellent set of well-spelled-out rules on her website. Essentially, the first person who either pays or sets up a vetting has dibs on the horse.
The short version is this: I decide to take an enormous leap of faith & set up a vetting for this horse. Whom I have not met. Someone was faster than me. Which was fair, but I'm only human, I cried anyway.
Benchmark reached out in kind pity & told me about another 4 year old just in she thought I might like, who'd been vetted clean by someone else, but they decided not to buy him for non-veterinary personal reasons. He was stunning, amazing lines for sport, a beautiful mover in a short video. He didn't have A Look, but I saw an incredible potential that could take me farther & higher than I could ever afford. Even if he didn't work out forever, I could train him to sell later.
I planned a trip, hooked up my trailer. Then I got a message from Benchmark: the first horse had been vetted by an Advanced event rider, but she decided not to buy him. Was I still interested?
We had a conversation. He had some sesamoiditis in one ankle, but soft tissues were good, all his other parts looked good. I was never ever ever going to want to do Advanced or anything close. He needed rest & several hundred pounds of groceries. She assured me he was sweet as pie & didn't seem the type who would beat up Solo (
an important consideration). She also just so happened to be shipping another horse to NC, so he could be delivered the next day for a very reasonable price (
which would save me 13 hrs of driving, diesel & miles on my old-enough-to-vote truck, & stress of hauling a baby horse by himself).
Yes, yes, I was irretrievably interested.
I made the largest Paypal transaction of my life
. In more funny-ness, aforementioned Advanced rider ended up purchasing the other horse I nearly purchased. Which I think actually worked out perfectly, because I definitely saw upper levels (
of anything you wanted) in that horse.
24 hours later, I met Intensive Harmony. A big shoutout to
Scott Norris Horse Transport for excellent service. As this still-technically-3-year-old stepped off the trailer, all legs & curiosity, 24 hours of
oh-my-cod-what-have-I-done melted away. He was everything Benchmark had said: kind, calm, brave, beautiful...and his eye, that Look was real.
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Fresh off the trailer, checking out new world from borrowed stall |
In a burst of eloquence, I texted her:
OMG, I LOVE HIM!!!
It took me two weeks to come up with a barn name. I have also kept his Jockey Club name for now; he is still very much a baby & we're taking it slow, we have time to try out "official" names. But I'd like to introduce you to Echo (
continued musical theme not intentional, it just happens, I swear), the newest member of Team Flying Solo.
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First day in my paddock - yes, he was super thin |
He arrived at the end of January. There are already many stories & naturally, vet bills to go with them. As I often remind him, though, he is fortunate to be extremely adorable, which makes it difficult to stay in a bad mood even when things do not go according to the backup standby reserve backup plan.
He still has weight to gain & we're just working on basics under saddle. But we are (
occasionally) under saddle. Feet are a big project, but progress is progressing in fits & spurts.
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First meeting |
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Echo: He seems neat! Solo: Great, another kid to train. |
At a dark time of year (
literally & figuratively at present), he is adding his own brand of light to Solo's steady beam. The road isn't smooth or straight (
is it ever?), but it's not a dead-end.
I'm not sure where this chapter will lead. And I confess that part of the reason you haven't heard about Echo before now is that I really didn't know if there would be much of a story to tell.
And once again, I was afraid to break any fragile shards of hope with the weight of naming them aloud.
It's a little...less brave, perhaps, to tell the story afterwards, less risky than sharing it in real time. But he's a horse & I still own him, so there's plenty of risk still to come. And I have missed this community of blog-land, even though I was lurk-reading.
So I'm going to work on filling in the past year of lessons learned from this bold & ridiculously adorable dark bay who I've come to call my Baby Monster.
I think he just may be something really special.
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Because this face.. |