The New Journey Begins........More Talk and A Little Shift....

Part One

Maybe a month after we made the deal to trade the Arabian horse for training, BG told me there was an inquiry for a young western horse. That grew from an inquiry for one horse into an inquiry for two. The buyer was the sister of a woman with a horse that had been misused by a BNT.

According to BG this woman was sending that problem horse to BG after Scottsdale 2009 to work out his issues. She was going to pay an entire years' board and training, along with extra money for incidentals like vet care etc, right up front. That's how much she trusted BG to do what the horse needed AND it also spoke to how rich this woman was in the first place that she could even afford to make such an upfront payment.

BG weilded this woman's intent to send him a horse like some kind of proof of BG's skills as well as what he and WF could do for me with such connections. Now, after BG and WF's purchase of Storm, this woman's sister suddenly was looking at my horses as the possible western horse prospects she sought. The implication was the interest came because of Storm's purchase. Again the message was I needed them and sticking with them would get my dream on track.

There was an appointment set for the both sisters to come view the horses right after the Scottsdale show when the sister's horse was supposed to arrive. The women would kill two birds with one stone and come to see the safe arrival of the one horse for training and look at two of mine for possible purchase.

Because of this appointment the focus changed from just getting horses safe for me to ride to getting those two horses ready for viewing. Getting young horses ready for me to ride was no longer our only priority. Getting something sold had to take precedent. Starting more young horses would take a back burner as we worked towards sales of horses already started.

There were other changes that were gradually taking place as well. Before we made the deal to trade Storm for training, BG hardly missed a scheduled day of work. We even worked extra days now and then. It seems to me that once the deal was made there became all kinds of reasons for BG to skip working horses.

It wasn't like BG wasn't working horses at all. It was just that there seemed to be some kind of reason nearly every week to skip a day here and a day there or the work day itself was being shortened. The five day work week and five horses a day terms agreed to in the contract were not always being met.

Sometimes those reasons made sense to me. Sometimes they made me wonder. Why the vet appointment for the dog couldn't be made on a day we didn't work horses, don't ask me but I guess you get my drift. The priorities subtly began to change although the way BG talked made it sound like I was his number one priority. It was easier for me to believe what he said than to see what he was doing.

Those changes started off slow and gradually accelerated. Between health issues here and BG got hurt and the weather was rotten for most of that winter so it was easy to think these reasons for not working horses were valid. Looking back there were plenty of days that horses went unworked or that work days were cut short before we even got to the point that I realized there maybe I should be keeping track of what was being done. However, I just didn't see it at the time or maybe I was in denial that I'd put myself into such a vulnerable situation.

At the beginning BG had been keeping a record of which horses were worked. I found his assistant checking horses off that list that had been worked by me. I reminded her I had worked those particular horses myself. She relayed that didn't matter. BG was keeping track of all the horses regardless of who worked them. While it bothered me a bit, it wasn't enough for me to even mention it to BG or inquire why. I just figured dit was one more thing about horse keeping he was being anal about. Only much later would I learn he really wasn't anal about horsekeeping, he was anal about selling himself.

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

A New Year Starts

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