News flash! We have new horses! We saw a classified ad, made a phone call, took a road trip in the rain, wrote a check, went back with the horse trailer, and look what we got: a sweet little buckskin mare and her four month old stud colt! This should come as no surprise if you know us well—we have been looking for a buckskin horse for about four years, and have skimmed through countless horse classifieds in search of the perfect one. And in true horse-collector’s fashion, we bought not one, but two!
This is a seven year old registered Quarter Horse mare named Command A Cowgirl, and her baby is by Cooked To Par, a son of Cooke County Etc who is working on a pretty nice performance record in reining. The mare is said to have been ridden as a youngster, and has been a broodmare for the past four years. So we are hoping to get her riding again, and see if she has riding talent as well as the sweet disposition that is already evident. The little guy is gentle as well, so we’re excited to get started on halter training with him.
I was at work browsing the craigslist postings in the farm and garden section, and found the ad. I emailed it to my husband at his work, and by the time he picked me up after work, he had already called the seller to find out more about the colt. We wanted to go look at them that weekend, but there was already a lady in line ahead of us. We got a call Saturday morning that the horses were still available, so we took the afternoon to go look at them. It was a rainy, muddy day, so we just admired them, talked with the owner, and agreed to come back the following weekend with a trailer. Waiting a week was not fun, but we knew we had some work to do on our horse pens, setting up some fence to keep the new horses separate from our other three until they could get used to being around them.
Discussing it with my husband, it wasn’t hard to make a decision on whether to buy just the stud colt (we were certain we wanted him), or to also buy the mare. The foal was only four months old, and it just didn’t seem right to split them up yet. I had asked the seller if the mare was rideable, and she said she had gotten on her bareback one time, and the mare just walked around happily and she could turn her with just the halter. Because it was so rainy and muddy out, I didn’t want to mess with her that day, but she seemed very gentle from the ground. I am very happy that we bought them both, and I can’t wait to see what they’re going to turn out to be like. Cowboy Dad wants to work with the colt, and I am anxious to ride the mare, so we both have a project to work with.
The two new ones settled right in with no trouble at all, and ate and drank happily in their new pen. We’ve been petting them a lot and just letting them get used to us, and the colt is very curious and friendly. He wants to do a lot of sniffing and investigating our fingers, which makes me think he’s probably been hand fed before. They don’t seem to have a spooky or evasive thought in their heads, so they will likely be a good fit in our bunch. We haven’t yet tried to put them in with the other three, because we don’t want the baby getting pushed around and bitten. The plan is to let them all out to graze and see how the horses act around each other out in the open, where they will hopefully have enough room to get away from the ones who determine themselves “top dog” of the herd. Daisy has always been the boss, but she lets Milo be next to her like he’s her own foal. And she is friendly to Cricket, so the three get along fine. The new mare was the boss of the herd she was with when we bought her…so it is uncertain right now who the “top dog” will be. I don’t see Daisy giving in at all, since this is her home turf. But this new mare has a foal to protect, so I hope she stands up to Daisy just a little bit.
We have been very busy painting our parents’ house, so we haven’t had a spare minute to play with the horses. Cowboy Dad came home from work yesterday with a brochure of all of the trails in the state of Iowa, and said we need to take a trail ride soon. It will be our reward for getting the house painted and over with, and I can’t wait!
This is the mare’s pedigree:
I am a Google fanatic, so I’ve been searching the internet for any parallel bloodlines I can find, and I found this video of Command A Acey, our mare’s half brother and nephew (same sire, but the dam is a half-sister to our mare) and he is a pretty cool gelding. He’s listed for sale on equine.com for $10,000. I do know that being related to a performance horse doesn’t mean anything if said horse has no experience….but it does make me think that this mare we bought will have a good mind and potential to be a sweet horse for us. Here is the video of Command A Acey:
