First Outings

Scarlet arrived on Sunday and I was so happy to see him. I got a call from the hauler that they were about 30 minutes out and headed right on over. I got there just about when they pulled in. Scarlet started calling out when they stopped moving. The hauler said it was cause he heard me. I kinda chuckled at that. Scarlet always has thrown a fit while being in the trailer if he wasn’t moving. So him calling and starting to dance around was just normal.

He walked down the ramp like a sane horse, which I really wasn’t expecting. He was in pretty good shape, just a tiny nick on his left hind about the size of the tip of my pinky. It was already dry and honestly, horses get small nicks like that all the time so I was 100% not worried about it.

I put him in his stall and he stuffed his face into the hay waiting for him right away. He ate, paced, “discussed” with his new neighbors, and drank some water while I watched him for a bit. I took him out to give him a bit of room to stretch his legs in the round pen. He rolled a bunch but wasn’t much interested in kicking up his heels. A bit too much new for him to do that. So I brought him back and groomed him really well. He was super dusty and hairy since he hadn’t been getting regular groomings while shedding. He and one of his neighbors had to bite and paw at each other a bunch to try and figure out who is the badest baddy of them all but no squealing which was nice. I wanted to stick around till he pooped but I’d been there for a couple of hours and he hadn’t. He doesn’t like to drink while in a trailer so I wasn’t too surprised that he was a bit dehydrated. He had drunk and ate while I was there so I wasn’t too worried.

Monday was the first time I went out to ride. I was sooo excited to be able to get back on him. Some people probably would have given their horses a bit longer to get settled in but Scarlet needs work and needs his routine. It’s easier to get him settled into what he is going to be doing, rather than letting him laze around for a while. He was quite tense when I got him out to groom. The crossties were not his friend either. They were kinda far away from his stall since my tack room happened to be one that was farther away. But, we were still within eyesight of horses so I didn’t think it would be a problem. But the crossties kinda echoed when you walked into them and he did not like that. So we spend about 30 minutes dancing around while I groomed him. He didn’t want to tie to the crossties either so that hadn’t been an option. Once I got on him, he was quite good. He called out a bunch but was only slightly tense while working and didn’t really try to act up. I called it after an easy 30ish minute ride. I only wanted to get him out and moving. I am not going to ask too much of him for a week or so. I want him settled in before I ask him to work harder. He did very well for the first ride.

Tuesday, we did a bit more work with the crossties. I walked in, turned around and walked right back out with him a few times till he didn’t balk at entering. There we stopped and walked out a bit. I was able to do a bit of the grooming in the crossties, though he wasn’t attached to them. Having the crossties on his halter caused him to panic a bit more than just having the lead so I wasn’t going to push it too much. I don’t want him to freak out in the crossties. I just want him to get used to them and deal with their scariness. He was much less tense for our second ride and did a bit more work at the walk for me. He was really good and only called out twice. He even almost stretched down at the walk. Not as much as he normally would but it was close. Afterward, I got him to stand in the crossties, hooked up to them while I untacked him and groomed him. He was very good and got a bunch of treats for being so brave.

It’s great to have him back and I’m really enjoying being able to go out to the barn every day again. He is doing really well for just having arrived a couple of days ago. We will ride again on Wednesday and then Thursday will be his day off. That is the busiest day for traffic for my husband so I agreed to cook dinner on Thursdays and make that my non-riding day. I feel very positive about our potential rides and working us both back into fitness. It will be great to get back into enough shape that both Scarlet and I can do a full workout and not feel super exhausted. Plus, we both have a bit of chub that we need to lose! No better way to do that than by riding. 😉

SCARLET IS COMING!

I got notice that Scarlet is coming down! He will be here on Sunday!

The barn manager at our old barn texted me Saturday morning to ask if I had heard from the transport company since they were dropping another horse off at the barn he was at up north on Saturday afternoon. I hadn’t, so I gave them a call.

They checked the schedule and said they’d give me a call back. When they did, they said they can pick him up today. He will have a layover in LA for the night and then will head on down in the morning. I should get a notice of when he will be there but, let’s be honest, I’m probably going to be out there from around 10 am on or something.

I’m so excited. Also a little anxious. Scarlet has never ridden well in trailers and now he doesn’t even load well. Not much I can do about that till I become good friends with someone who has a trailer and is willing to hitch it up for me to practice with. We did have a small practice session a couple of months back but that is not nearly enough to fix his anxiety getting in.

Either way, it’s out of my hands now. This company does tons of these trips and are very good at it. They will be able to handle him, especially since Scarlet doesn’t try to attack anyone, he just is thinking about running away.

I’m shaking I’m so excited. I will finally have my boy down here and we will be able to ride again! Woot! San Diego, here we come!

Updated after Scarlet was picked up: Scarlet supposedly walked right onto the trailer. I’m literally in shock. He has had such a hard time loading anytime I’ve had to do it with him recently. Oh well, I’m not going to question my good luck. Here are a couple pictures of his fuzzy butt on the trailer. I do not know how he got mud behind his freaking ear. We will take care of that tomorrow.

Muddy ear!

Progress! Kinda…

So, I had been having trouble getting into contact with the barn down here to confirm that a stall was ready for Scarlet. I had gotten a call from the shipping company on Sunday saying they had a trip on Monday with a Tuesday drop off. I tried to confirm with the barn that everything would be ready but I couldn’t get ahold of the trainer. So Scarlet didn’t get on that trip.

I figured it’s Sunday. Even though most barns operate on the weekends, I know the trainer has a family so no big deal. Monday rolls around. No call by 2 pm. So I give another call. No answer. I call at 5ish, leave another message. Tuesday rolls around. No call by 1:30, I call again. No answer. At this point, I’m getting annoyed because I had put down a deposit to hold the stall and they had deposited that check in the bank. In my mind, that means that as soon as they accepted my money, a stall should be open for me. However, I couldn’t get into contact with them to confirm this. I was getting extremely frustrated. Yes, it had only been two days but I think that a full business day is enough to get back to someone.

Finally, around 2 something on Tuesday (I know I know, it’s really not that long to get back to me. But I’m an anxious horse owner trying to finagle getting my horse down here) I got a call back. We talked, the stall is clean and fixed up. She made up a name plate for Scarlet with his feed stuffs. We talked about tack room stuff. And then she said that the best way to get in contact with her was via email. I have literally never met a horse person who was on top of their email enough to use that as their primary means of communication. Not that I mind, since I’m almost constantly connected to my gadgets, but it just boggled my mind.

So now I’ve got confirmation everything is ready. The next time the transport company is taking a trip down, Scarlet is going to be on that trailer. I really really need to get back into riding. It’s driving me nuts to not be going out to a barn on a regular basis.

San Diego starting soon

San Diego here Scarlet comes! Hopefully…

Getting Scarlet down to San Diego with me is complicated. I don’t have a truck and trailer. If I did, it would still be hard. It’s a long drive from the central coast to San Diego. Six hours minimum without traffic. And since you have to go through LA, there is ALWAYS traffic. So I have to organize transportation to get him down here. The timing on that has been a little tricky. I didn’t want to bring him down the first weekend after I arrived

I didn’t want to bring him down the first weekend after I arrived since I needed some time to settle in and find a barn. I also had a farrier appointment scheduled for the 15th. I didn’t want to bring him down till after that since the last thing I wanted to worry about when he gets here is finding a reputable farrier. So I was hoping to schedule a trip down this weekend.

Unfortunately, the company that I decided to go with has trips once a week and they aren’t consistently on the same day. The trip this week was for Wednesday evening, the evening he was getting shod. So that idea had to be ditched. The company doesn’t know the exact date of the trip next week but they said they would give me a few days heads up. Hopefully, Scarlet will be down here soon.

Finding a barn wasn’t as hard as I expected. There are a lot of barns down here, of all price ranges. I found one in about the same price range that I was paying in the central coast. The quality is a little lower than my previous bar as far as style and “niceness” but there are several arenas, the horses are fed a good quantity of food, the horses look healthy and the pipe stalls are pretty large. 24’x24′ I believe. I got spoiled at my last barn. It was much cheaper than it should have been, based on the quality of the care and the facilities. I could have tried to search around a bit more to see if there were nicer barns still within my price range but I’m more concerned with getting him down here.

I’m kinda going crazy without riding. Due to needing to move, my riding before getting down here was erratic at best. It has been about 2 months since I’ve had a consistent riding schedule. I felt that change when I last rode. Scarlet was really energetic and my back ended up hurting a lot. When I’m not riding, my core strength deteriorates so fast. One of my goals is to work on my core strength outside of riding so that I can improve overall in fitness and in riding. Right now, that is a little hard to do as my house is still filled with boxes and there isn’t really anywhere to stretch out on the floor to do a plank or a situp.

So, right now I’m just settling into my new home and trying to organize Scarlet getting down here. Hopefully, it happens soon and I can get back to riding. I miss my boy!