So it begins....

So, I've got this blog....

I suppose I should start from the beginning. I'm old enough to be offended when people ask my age, but I still get carded. I live with my beautiful husband in Michigan's capital city. Our household consists of 2 extremely loyal (my wording for needy) golden retriever boys, Lebowski and Samual, as well as Mojo, our older-than-time-itself lab (maybe pit-bull) mix, matriarch of the herd. Do not laugh-Mojo takes her role VERY seriously. In addition, we have 2 cats, 1 with all her legs and one with only 3. This is extremely funny to me, particularly because "Three Legs" can outrun any of our animals, maybe Miles included.

Miles. The reason for this blog (ugh, I know there's a really cool French saying for that).

I adopted Miles from an amazing organization called New Vocations. They transition racehorses to new careers and adopt them out...you can see Miles' page here, when his name was still Masarin. If you want your own OTTB, I HIGHLY recommend them~they have amazing horses and are very honest about each horse's strengths and weaknesses. I really did get a helluva deal:-) This was September of 2009.

The first 3 weeks of September after the trailer dropped him off to me and his new home were....not great. My next post will detail my previous horse experience, but I had lost my last horse a month before, and I know I was still reeling from this experience. Ebony was also a thoroughbred, a mare, and I loved her very, very much. She was fatally kicked (probably) in a freak pasture accident, and I was with her as she was euthanized. I'm so, so grateful I could be there in her last moments, but it was a horrible thing to go through. I still miss my girl.

Anyway, I hadn't planned on getting a new horse so soon, but I did. It was a combination of intuition, timing, his Internet description, talking to the folks at New Vocations, and I'm not ashamed to say I had a rather poignant dream about Miles that led me to drive down to Ohio to see him and then adopt him. I can be a fruit that way sometimes.

So, those first 3 weeks...my barn owner will laugh if she reads this. He was underweight. He was studdy as all hell. Yes, he's a gelding, but I'm pretty sure he was gelded after he was 6 years old (when he stopped racing), so he had, um, issues being next to mares, being alone, being with another gelding, being with a (very tolerant and very bitchy, we tried both) mare, everything. I was really despairing on finding a turnout situation that would work for him, and people with horses know how important it is for a horse to feel happy and secure in their living space. He was still going into a stall at night at this point. During this time, work in the arena was out of the question. Any time I tried to lead him away from the barn there was rearing, kicking, crowding, you name it. He just wasn't ready. Of course, looking back I shouldn't have been surprised. Who knows what happened at his previous home. He was also a RACEHORSE-that kind of behavior is usually worked around instead of corrected, and of course there's the whole "running at full speed on a regular basis" aspect to life that I wasn't giving him.

Finally, we found something that worked...Miles in a small pasture alone, with mares on one side, and a very sweet Haflinger stud on the other. I LITERALLY could not work with him until this balance was found. I went on a short vacation for 3 days after we put him there, and when I came back, he had become the horse I now know and love. He was relaxed, attentive, sweet, a little pushy (though we took care of that right quick), but curious and such a ham. In other words, he was the horse I had adopted 3 weeks before, finally!

Things got even better a couple weeks later, when he found his soul-mate in gelding form. The barn owner talked to me about trying the "new horse" and Miles together in a pasture, and I agreed that it might be a good match...hoo boy was it ever! His name is LaShore, owned by the lovely Judy. Miles and LaShore really are ridiculously cute together...more on them later. They make great pictures, should really have their own sitcom, and I'm so happy they have each other.

Anyway, in October of 2009, I took my first ride on my new horse, and thus began the journey. I've never been a journal keeper-believe me, I've tried! Since blogs are what all the kids are doing nowadays, I thought why not-I'm not particularly funny, witty or interesting, and I'm still trying to find my voice, but I want some kind of record of this exciting time. I've also been reading some AMAZING blogs by other riders, and they certainly inspired me to start...I hope to post their blogs here soon, once I get the hang of everything. Thanks again, everyone (anyone?), for reading!