The New Journey..........Going into Show Season....

Part One

By the time horse show season arrived, the weather was better but the days working horses wasn't. My worst fears were being realized although it still wasn't obvious to me at the time. BG was doing just enough work to keep me dangling and the focus of that work was always shifting.

My horses were still getting worked but it was sporadic. Days were being cancelled here, there and everywhere. Many reasons seemed to be show related, that and getting their female boxer bred. It seemed like everything and anything seemed to be a good excuse to cancel. The five (5) day work week from our contract was nearly non existent but I continued to hang in there hoping by some chance I'd get through this with what I needed.

I told myself it was the stress of the coming show season and a barn full of horses for BG. He did have horses in training that were show stock for a change and it seemed like he had a houseful of kids counting on showing. I thought once we got past regionals the pressure would be off and BG would go back to doing what he'd contracted to do.

The friends I was talking with each day about all of this were not nearly as kind. They were getting a whole different picture from this than I was. Any ideas any of them might have had to use BG for a trainer had been totally squashed by now and they were angry about all the cancelling of plans BG was doing. Even if you ask those friends to this day they can tell you the myriad of excuses BG used and what they thought of them.

Me, I only remember in generalities of his excuses. One at a time they didn't seem that threatening to me and somehow BG had me believing he was going to make up whatever he missed. I still believed what he was saying. Looking back I feel pretty foolish about this. I saw so much evidence of BG lying to others to cover his *ss, you'd think I would have realized he was lying to me. BUT he had me convinced that I was somehow different than the others. After all, he respected me as a horse woman and those others, well they didn't have a clue according to BG. I still can't believe I was that gullible but the facts speak for themselves. When it came to BG he had me snowed big time!

Once I stayed home for foaling out Dare's foal, I didn't take any horses back to BG's place that were not being ridden. The weather had turned around enough, I could get my conditioning done at home and not interfere with getting the work I needed done at BG's place. I knew by now I could only count on so many hours of BG at the barn. If he didn't get the job done then, it wouldn't get done that day so I didn't want those lunging horses anywhere near his barn.

Unfortunately, I also began to see evidence that BG really didn't care for horses the way he said he did. While he talked about being conscientious about their care and loving horses, that's not what I was beginning to see. While he might care for some horses, he obviously didn't care for ALL horses. If a horse wasn't what he thought it should be it was not worth anything. AND if it didn't make him look good, it was the horse's fault.

If you've spent anytime at all reading my blog you know I am not one of those people who believes that horses are out there plotting against us humans. I believe if a horse has problems there are good reasons for those problems and many times they stem from people. It's up to people to sort through those things to help such horses regain their trust so they can do their best.

Over time, I got tired of BG's mean remarks about horses that were just being horses. Somehow BG thought it was the horse's fault if things didn't work. The green mare with a green kid for a rider was a piece of crap because she objected to the kid riding off her face. The anglo arab mare was another piece of crap because she didn't have papers and didn't look like a purebred and was equally poorly trained. The gelding that peed a lot and could be naughty was trash but then he had a rider riding off his face too. The naughty stallion with a permissive owner was also crap.

I can't even tell you how many times I reminded BG that it was NOT the horse's fault. I wouldn't tolerate him talking that way about these horses in front of me. This kind of behavior is just not what a true horseman does nor was it a proper thing to be teaching such things to all those kids BG managed to surround himself with. BG was so used to my objections he would preface his comments with, "MiKael says......" and he could do that in such a way he was still slamming the horse.

I was not happy to discover this side of BG nor was I happy to see an accumulation of things over time that said BG wasn't who he said regarding the horses.

WF's horse has quite an extensive show career. That horse is not ridden most of the time although he is still shown. He gets lunged a few times a week. The rest of the time he stands in a stall except maybe sometimes he gets the chance to eat some grass in hand every now and then.

During show season he's taken to horse shows as needed chasing those Sweepstakes dollars with no extra preparation. The horse is clipped and bathed of course and maybe gets his feet done but nothing extra is done to build up his physical condition for the job he's expected to do. The horse gets shown in multiple classes with no real preparation for that. Lunging does not keep a horse conditioned enough for performance. Just because this horse wins doesn't mean the way he is treated is right.

BG's own horse was standing outside in the mud all that spring with a bad case of scratches because WF wouldn't allow the horse in out of the rain. BG tolerated whatever WF said regardless of how his horse fared. I had a problem with what he'd told me about how horses SHOULD be cared for and how he was actually doing it.

As for my horses, it seemed like every young horse we worked ended up with galls from the cinch. I've never seen so many in my life. They were not just little things either, they were big hurking things and most times on both sides of the horses. BG always had some special treatment to use that made it OK to continue working these horses but sometimes I had to insist a horse get time off for them to heal. Other times I had to remind him the galls needed to be treated in the first place. My concern was growing.

When I had brought all the broodmares back from Boulder Knolls I was down one stall here. I had asked BG at that time if I could count on him keeping one horse for a little bit of time so Dave could get one more stall built. He assured me that would be fine, he was already figuring he would keep one pen open for use with my horses because he liked keeping them for sleep overs so he could do extra work with them. Again he told me not to worry about a charge. I was still paying board on Reflection he could carry the other horse.

At one point Louie was that horse living in the pen. During this time BG had two pens under a little cover on the back side of the barn. There were no sides to the cover so the rain still blew in. The location was a slope so rainwater was migrating through the cover on down the hill. Both horses in that location were standing in those pens with wet mud and straw up past their fetlocks.

I don't know about the other horse, but a bad case of scratches emerged on Louie and BG was totally oblivious. Since I wasn't paying anything for this horse to be there, I didn't really feel I had the right to complain but I couldn't get Louie out of there fast enough. I was all over Dave to get that stall finished and Louie home where he would be dry and those scratches could heal. Still it bothered me that BG was always selling what a great horseman he is and he'd let horses live in such conditions.

There was something else that was beginning to bother me too. Before BG and I began this venture around Storm, I would arrive in the morning to find evidence that Reflection had been worked. The horse was either in the cross ties sweaty or tied in his stall sporting a cooler. As time went on, I saw fewer signs that the horse was actually getting worked. Although when I would ask BG he would tell me he'd gotten up early to work that horse and then some story about the horse was still being naughty.

Frankly I really couldn't make sense of this. Reflection had really only come there to get me on him. The kinks had all been worked out before BG got him but now I seemed to have a horse with something chronic going on. I just didn't get it. Reflection is just not that kind of a horse. Reflection being naughty just to be naughty just didn't add up. There was something behind this behavior and BG sure wasn't getting it figured out. Without being able to see those rides, I was at a loss how to fix this.

I was struggling to pay board for Reflection. A few times I actually bought BG's hay for the barn instead of paying them directly so I could use my credit card to meet my obligation. From what I heard the horse wasn't getting any closer to me being able to ride him than he was the day he'd first arrived AND my requests for BG to not work him until I was there were going unmet. It was time to get Reflection out of there.

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

Then There's Breeding......

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