A Baby Boomer Dreams of Arabian Horses - The Legacy Continues - Part 8

Before I get started on the Baby Boomer series, I wanted to mention that Lori posted pictures of both teeth clacking and the flehmen response on her blog yesterday.
Since I didn't have pictures to go with the posts she pulled out the ones that she had. She's definitely much faster and better with the camera than I.

After the first two foals by Scandalous Legacy were on the ground, it was time to think about the breeding season. The plan was to get two foals on the ground out of each mare so we could decide which two mares crossed the best with my Arabian stallion. With the farm being small, I wasn't about to breed all four mares at once, so I decided to breed the two mares that had been too young to breed the year before and skip the two horses with foals at their sides.

Just about this time I was visiting at Feature Farm one day and saw a mare that I had foaled out as a baby. I inquired about what was happening with this horse because I knew that her owners had long since moved away. I was told that she was being sent to the auction at Enumclaw at the end of the month.

My heart sank. There was no way I could let this mare go to a fate like that. The Enumclaw auction was known to be frequented by the killer buyers. This mare would definitely be a candidate for that fate.

The horse had hardly been socialized with people. She certainly had never had one bond with her. She barely knew how to lead, clip and bath. Her contact with humans amounted to being led outside five days a week for a two hour turn out. Then back inside for the rest of the day. Supposedly groomed once a day when brought back inside. Clipped probably once a month and bathed once a year if there was a sale on ground or something.

The horse had never been off the place. I knew from experience that she had been protected from things that scared her instead of being taught to deal with them. As high strung as she was at that auction she would be scared out of her head. She would look like a crazy horse. Even with her quality, at an auction like Enumclaw she would definitely be killer bait.

As much as I really didn't want more than four broodmares, there was no way I could leave a horse I considered to be one of my horse children from my grooming days to such a fate. Bey Aana came home with me.

Feature Farm was considered to be a state of the art facility when it was built back in the 1980s. The clientele was high end just like the horses and the place was built with that in mind. Beautiful? Yes! Functional? Yes! Horse friendly? Not so much...everything outdoors except for the paddocks and the pastures is asphalt. That meant horses were loaded into trailers on the asphalt surface.

Bey Aana had never been inside a horse trailer. I took her up to mine the day before I intended to take her home just to give the mare the opportunity to look at it and smell it with no pressure. Much to my surprise, she hopped right in. But then the partitions rattling scared her and she jumped out just as quickly, falling on the asphalt. So before I even got the mare home she had stitches and a banged up knee. So much for good intentions.

Once I did get her to my farm, she had to be confined to her stall because of the leg injury. The poor mare had no idea what had just happened to her. She stood in her new stall and just shook, from head to toe. Even thought she'd been more socialized than Heiress, she had been so protected from anything that might scare her that she was just as traumatized by the move.

This poor mare had gone from the Horsey Hilton to what must have seemed like the Horsey Slums. She'd never seen a water bucket because of automatic waterers. She'd never seen a wheel barrow because with 55 stalls to clean they used much bigger equipment. Hay had been feed from chutes overhead. Seeing it flying over the wall almost sent her straight out through the wall. Adjustment on this small farm wasn't going to be easy especially since she trusted no one!

To be continued............

The Legacy Continues Part 9

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