Sunday afternoon I drove the pickup and trailer over to my brother’s place to pick up two horses. He and his wife are selling their acreage and wanting to move out-of-state, and they think for all practical purposes they should pass on being horse owners right now. So the horses are coming to our farm for further training and evaluation of their potentials and hopefully find their ways on to bigger and brighter things than being pasture ornaments.
I’m delighted to have them. They are a pair of black geldings, very close in color, size, temperament, and markings—they each have a small white half-pastern marking on a rear leg. They are gentle and friendly, very easy to handle and calm. Frostalitos Toby is a solid registered Paint, and the other gelding is a Tennessee Walker without papers. Toby has a decent pedigree as far as Paint horses go (I’m not that familiar with Paint bloodlines, and am generally not a fan of Paint colored horses), and has some noteworthy Thoroughbred lines farther back in his pedigree.
Toby was purchased from his breeder at age six, by the woman who sold him to my brother. You can read more of the story here of how my brother came to own him. Basically, the horse was sold as greenbroke, but was only ridden twice by my brother at an indoor arena before Toby came to live on their acreage. My brother then sent him to a trainer, who returned Toby after a week with cut up lip corners and the verdict that he was “untrainable”. Since then, he hasn’t been worked with, other than being lunged a time or two. So he is my new “project” horse, and it is uncertain how he will prove under saddle. The woman who sold him to my brother claimed she had spent over a thousand dollars on his training, and he had over 60 days’ riding, but she refused to ride him to show him to us, so we are certain there is more to his story than we were told. Time will tell us more.
The Tennessee Walking Horse is beautiful, already trained to ride, and seems to have a decent disposition. The kids and I went out the next day after bringing them home and let them out to graze, brushed them, and trimmed their hooves. Then that evening, Cowboy Dad went for a ride with us. He and our daughter rode Cricket and I rode the Tennessee Walker. We went out through the harvested bean field and down the road to the river and back. Both horses got antsy on the way home, which only proves they need to get out more and get some of their home-ward energy put to better use. The Tennessee Walker is really fun to ride. He really likes to move out, and automatically arches his neck and bows his head when he rides. He is much narrower than the Quarter Horses I am used to riding. I was happy to find him a joy to ride, and I think he would be a blast on trails or any type of pleasure riding.
With winter coming on, it might not have been the smartest venture to add two horses to the bunch we already have. But we didn’t pay anything for them, and we are already enjoying them so much during these fine days of fall that we don’t mind the extra feed it will take. I plan to saddle Toby up this evening and see if he remembers any of his training. He has been very gentle and friendly so far, so we’ll do some groundwork and hopefully form a basis of a calm toleration of each other.
Here are a few more photos from our ride:
