Virtual Brush Box

Freedom Hall during the 2014 World’s Championship Horse Show.

In case you wondered: Why Green?

So where to now?

Milton
I have had more than one person ask, Is he rideable? That is the plan. But then, that was the plan four years ago, so I can understand their hesitation.

Milton has enough style to do hunters at a local level and enough movement to get nice scores in the dressage phase of eventing. He doesn’t have hunter or dressage as a full-time career choice, but then neither do I. How high he can go in jumpers will depend on how he feels about jumps and speed and turn-and-burn. Even low-level jumpers courses are good practice for stadium. Because…

Everything about this horse screams “suitable for eventing”. We shall see how he feels about banks and ditches and water. I’m predicting he will either love it or at least tolerate it enough to be happy at Novice & Training & and maybe one Prelim as a bucket-list item.

And wouldn’t that be lovely.

Milton doesn’t have Rodney’s gobsmacking good looks, but – cross fingers – he will make up for it with a level head. Yes, Rodney really is that gorgeous. If I’m going to hit my head against a wall, it might as well be a wall made out of gold bricks. However, if my goal is to compete, better a 7 mover in the ring than a 9 in the pasture.

Above, Milton models the second Milton-specific purchase, his new bridle. The first was a white bucket wherein to carry his meals to the barn. Rodney’s is green. Mathilda’s was blue and is buried with her. The bit is Previous Horse’s old dressage bit. Dunno what Milton will ultimately be comfortable with, but this one is big and soft and a good place to start.

Looks like the browband will be a problematic fit. Oh well, Milton is likely to get the hand-made, custom bridle that I canceled for Rodney.

Rodney
Rodney will continue on his quest to wherever he is going. Nothing says I can’t take two horses to the AEC. It has been suggested that Rodney might even benefit from not being the center of all my emotional energy.

Saddle Seat
Staying with, kinda. I will finish out this show season, with possibly another shot at National Academy. After that, I will show enough next year to complete an ASHA awards program. The points have to be earned three years in a row. If I stopped now, I’d have to start all over again. After that, adieu equitation.

However, I will continue with weekly lessons at Stepping Stone, with more of an emphasis on performance. The specifics are different, but learning to concentrate with an ASB will help me to concentrate with the TBs.

Plus, it will still be good for me to get out of the house among the three-dimensional people.

Blog
Well, I needed content [Idea Request Accompanied by Barrel-Scraping Noises]. Now I have 16.1 hands of content. OTOH, I may get so caught up in playing with the new content that the blog wanders off. That wouldn’t be the worst thing.

We shall see.
~~
Outakes

How are we doing?

Milton
New Horse is a star. He is adapting faster than Rodney and I are.

He was hot and exhausted Saturday evening after the trip, but then, so was I. The next day, he looked around. Grass? Check. Water? Check. Hay? Check. Feed? Check. Room to roam? Check. People to scratch my itches? Check. Okay, I’m good.

He’s Joe Cool. He will spook at something new or unexpected, he’s only six, but he lacks the ‘Sky is FALLING! I’m going to DIE!’ response that Rodney and I share. Milton is more likely to say, ‘What the HELL was that? Oh, an acorn. Moving on.’

Front shoes on Tuesday. Blacksmith approved of his feet and his attitude.

Rodney
We’ve decided that Rodney is not dumb. He just has so many voices in his head that it takes a while for a new idea to make itself heard. Therefore, we have been keeping new and old separate for far longer than we have on previous occasions. Milton gets the pasture during the day and the stall at night; Rodney, vice versa. This gives them the chance to sniff noses through the bars. We have arranged the fans so that they are near each other while still separated by the stall wall.

For supervised greeting sessions, I open the top half of the stall door. Early on, Milton came over and offered a friendly neck nibble. Rodney screamed, pinned his ears, and tried to bite. Milton thought, ‘Enough of that’ and wandered off. Whereupon Rodney stuck his head out to say, ‘Come back, I want to be friends.’ I think he has social development issues. For now, they ignore the open space and bite at each other through the mesh.

Katherine
I’m stunned.

In the last few posts, I went over all the steps it took to get Milton here. Be that as it may, I still can’t figure out how – cosmically speaking – such a nice horse ended up in my backyard.

Haven’t ridden yet. Giving both of us – i.e. me – time to adjust. Bought Milton a bridle of his own yesterday. Will sort through bits and saddles today. Might sit upon this weekend, depending on how the introductions are going. To be clear, Milton would be fine with going back to work. I’m still trying to shift gears from horse owner/petter to horse owner/rider.

Plus, we still need to decide on suitable riding times. Oversight requirements will be different for a young greenie than for a 25-year-old retiree.

I’ve groomed. We’ve gone for a hand walk. I’ve sat there while he investigated the book I was reading. Mostly, I’ve been spending my time hanging out in the barn, giving us all the chance to breath the same oxygen.

So how does one arrange for an international horse purchase? By spewing money and numbers and bills in every direction.

Horse: Paypal backed by a credit card.

If I’m going to order a horse online, might as well pay online.

This turned out to be the hardest part. When we bought Rodney, we used a wire transfer, which went through nigh on immediately. This is no longer the case. Banking rules changed last fall. Banksters were slow to catch up. For two days, they promised immediate action. Suddenly, on Monday afternoon, after fluffing the transfer several times, they told us that a wire transfer takes 3-7 days. WTF? In caps!

In hindsight, we could have paid days earlier. However, one of my conditions of sale was no enormous shipping fees nor hideous quarantine requirements. Not really a concern, but I did not know that at the time.

PayPal? Either an extremely ridiculous or an extremely post-modern way to buy a horse. Unfortunately, PayPal didn’t like smell of the Sprucehaven account. Seller Linda Plank hadn’t used the account in a while and needed to reverify. PayPal got obstreperous about the process. Ironically, if she’d had no account, we could have done it immediately.

Plus, if you back your account with a credit card, PayPal charges a fee. If you give PayPal access to your bank account, there is no fee. I don’t like people having access to my account. The cost of being paranoid.

We ended up sending the money to my horse advisor, writer & blogger Karen Briggs (may her hollandaise never separate). This got the money into Canada, to be settled between them. We had to pay the large fee and suffer a crappy exchange rate. However, this was Monday at 11:45 pm, less than 8 hours from Milton’s non-refundable scheduled departure.

Then the next morning, Linda’s Paypal account was happy and open for business. Plus, the wire transfer money turned up at Linda’s bank. Oy.

Vetting, Paperwork, & New Shipping Boots: included with above.

Linda kindly arranged and paid for these, meaning we could pay her a lump sum instead of racking up international fees for each transaction.

Ontario to KY: Credit card.

Despite being a Canadian company, the quote was in US dollars. At a decent exchange rate, no less.

Layover: On account. Cash

Originally, the layover fee was to have been added to the second shipper’s fee, who I would then pay. This is a handy convenience. However, come the day, I forked over the cash in person.

KY to AL: Cash

Paid in person.

Acknowledgements
Enormous thank yous to everyone involved, for going above and beyond, for sending good vibes, for coming up with solutions, for listening to me fuss. Major thanks to the household’s hardworking breadwinner for all of the preceding, for keeping us afloat, and for thinking that horses are a good idea.

Tomorrow: Milton and Me.