April fools comes a day early to Hillside...

Happy April Fools Day everyone! The snow and wind is lovely isn't it?

For Rob and I had a fun March 31....it was SUPPOSED to start with a horse arriving in the early am, so I had trouble sleeping as I was worried the rig would come early, and as our drive is a little tight for big rigs, we had to meet them at the end of the drive, so my subconscious was keeping me at the ready ALL night.

But morning came, and no horse, so I texted the hauler, and now they weren't expecting to be here until 6pm, so that is fine.

Meanwhile we also had round bales due to arrive shortly after I finished teaching, but 1pm came and went and no round bales...so we get a call from the hay guy, and his truck is broken down, but he is still going to try to make it out, but will be late. So of course Rob and I start to worry that the horse and hay will come at the same time.

We needn't have worried. Hay truck didn't make it until after 7pm, and only after Rob drove out to meet them with some oil. We then unloaded it, and Rob helped drain the oil, and the now very ill hay truck is resting in the parking lot until they can come back out to fix it.

Meanwhile the horse...supposed to be here at 6. So at 7 I text the driver, and now due closer to 9:30, driver was going to call when he was an hour and a half away...so when 9 pm came and went I texted agan...and he was stll south of Hanna....which I thought was 3-4 hours away. I was wrong.

Finally get a text at 2:30 that she is close...or would be if the driver didn't take highway 14 unstead of highway 16....it wasnt until 3:30 am, in the dark, and in a light drizzle that she arrived.

Now let me back up a bit, when I was originally told the horse was coming in the morning, the dispatcher said we wanted to make sure that "THIS" horse was unloaded in the daylight, and before the hauler unloaded her, he asked me if I had ever ridden the horse (I had not) as she was, in his words, a "wing nut" and had been a little difficult to deal with unloading and in her stall, I was a little worried about having to lead her from the road, past the house, to the barn in the dark.

So he opens the trailer, moves a mini out of the way, and I finally get to meet the "wing nut" who is standing there all innocent with her giant ears. As far as I can tell she just doesn't get trailer ramps and felt she had to jump over the ramp rather than put one foot on it. But after a few cookies from Rob, she walked very politely all the way to the barn, with the only other issue was having to jump the puddle before the barn.

After checking vitals we put her in the arena to stretch, and she enjoyed mugging rob for cookies and prancing around. She wasn't as keen to be put into her stall, (understandable after 6 days of travel) but settled down enough that Rob and I could get a couple hours of sleep before it was time to get right back up and do chores!

So without further ado, I would like to introduce "Izzy"

Izzy is a coming 7 year old mare, that joins us from New York State. She is destined to be my new dressage prospect. She hasn't shown dressage, but has done hack classes and her training looks to be in line with basic dressage training.

Her real selling point is her big ears which have to be seen to be appreciated. Her nose is about 1/2 the circumference of Coregel's!

On the downside she has even less tail than Rocket due to tail chewing incident.

She is just little at 15.1 hands, but as my legs get shakier, the happier I am to be close to the ground ;) And she is pretty wide.

In case you couldn't guess based on the tiny nose, long mane and long bridle path, she is a half Arabian...and the other half is...Dutch Harness horse. And if you don't know what that is, you are not alone...I had to google it too!

Last night was my first time seeing her; I had only seen videos, but when we had her in the arena she had a pretty cool trot. She hasn't been ridden for a few months (6) as her former owner was away at school, but this actually works well for me as now I can restart her like I would a baby horse so that she and I are on the same page training wise.

Karen