In The Beginning

We bought Bay about 5 years ago. My husband had started taking riding lessons that January with our grandson. The lessons were a Christmas present from me. It was getting on to the end of the summer now and our trainer had casually mentioned that she had taken a couple of students who were looking to buy a horse together out to see this horse, but they had decided he was to lazy and to old. Still, she thought he was a nice horse and she thought the DH might like him. Now we were not in the market for another horse. I had bought Boo almost a year before and we were still settling in to being horse owners, but for some reason we decided to ride out to Newberg and take a look at this horse. We should have known better...we're both a soft touch, and this guy was pretty. He had the most beautiful eyes. So mellow. We each rode him in the arena. No problems even though Mick was still a beginner and I was barely any better in the saddle than he. The only problem we had was getting him up into the canter. I remembered that the younger girls had found him to be lazy, but I figured lazy wasn't such a bad thing for novice riders.

I distinctly remember asking the seller "no buck, bolt, or bite?" "Not as far as I've seen," she said. We decided that night that a 12-year-old gelding would be just the ticket for the DH's first horse and made arrangements to come back with our vet for a vet check, which he passed no problem. While taking care of the business end of the deal I got to looking at his papers and discovered that he wasn't 12 years old. He was 8 years old. I have no idea why the seller's agent thought he was twelve.

The DH was out of town the day we brought him back to our boarding barn. He loaded up on the trailer well and handled the ride all alone well too. When I turned him out in the arena he ran around and around and around. At times I thought he might come crashing through the gate. I groomed him a bit, fitted him with a Baker sheet and turned him into his stall. Once the DH came home though I mostly kept my distance. He wasn't my horse. I already had a horse.

From the very start Bay proved to be a very different personality than Boo. If you have a treat Boo is your best buddy. Bay was more discriminating. If you wanted Bays affection you had to earn it. If you wanted to ride Bay you had to earn it too. Bay set out from the very first ride to make the DH earn the privilege. I don't think he rode him even one time that first 3 months without Bay trying to buck him off. One afternoon during a lesson the DH rode past the open window at the back of the barn just as a car came rumbling down the gravel road and Bay bolted and nearly ran through the gate like he did the first day I'd turned him out in the arena...and wouldn't you know it...the little sucker was a nipper. I remember sitting in the barn on a freezing winter night watching the DH survive another bucking episode and thinking "we made a mistake buying this horse. The DH is going to get hurt."