Racing to Ride: VCMBH: Interested Parties

I'm seriously thankful to Viva Carlos for doing these awesome blog hops! They're always interesting and fun. I love reading the different answers/stories to her questions from other bloggers.

So L asks what it was that made us interested in buying our horse in the first place. I figured Beefs would be the best one to write about since I had trained Winn before I got him and bred Indy.

Because he makes me smile :)

Sometime in the summer of 2008, my fiancé (then boyfriend), had gotten a call from owners saying they were sending him a horse. We went fishing with some friends that day and when we arrived back at the barn, one of the cutest little horses I had seen was waiting in a stall. I asked Ty what his name was. Beefheart. Say what?!!! What an awful name for such a cute horse!

A few days later, I was watching Beefs on the track. He was a nice (not extraordinary) mover, uphill and balanced. Too bad he wasn't taller. I figured he could make a really nice youth/smaller adult horse one day.

Fast forward to 2009. Long story short, Beefs had two horrible races, a win, and then another horrible race. As a racehorse he was one dimensional, meaning that if he didn't get the lead he ran like crap. The owners wanted to find him a new home.

I knew he might be hard to sell because he wasn't very big and was a little long in the pasterns. My friend looked at him and wasn't interested. I jokingly told Ty that maybe I should buy him for a dressage horse. Nah, he's too short for me. Ty said that he wasn't and that I needed to get over the height thing. The more I thought about it, the more it seemed worth a try. He was extremely athletic and smart. I didn't have a dressage horse of my own at the time. Why not? Sure, I'll take him. Always the voice of reason, Ty asked me if maybe I thought I should ride him first. Oh yeah, that might be a good idea.

I threw dressage tack on him and trotted him along with one of the racehorses Ty was jogging, thinking I was going to be pissed if I got run off with on the track in a dressage saddle. Beefs was actually really soft in the mouth, almost too soft. He wasn't spooky and was steerable. Good enough. Not for Ty. Why don't you ride him in the rodeo arena (that is connected to the track). Um, okay. He was really good, but the whole circle concept was pretty new to him. He would trot half of a perfect circle and then drift towards the track for the other half. By the end he had figured it out. To top it off, he didn't spook at the flags and banners flapping in the wind or any of the other scary looking things in the arena. Okay, sold. Ty traded out what the owners owed for training for Beefs. Best. Gift. EVER!

I'll never regret buying him. I bought him with the intention of selling him down the road, but I'll never be able to do it. He will be with me or someone in my family (I want my niece to be able to learn on him and show him) for the rest of his life. I couldn't have found a more perfect imperfect horse.

1.	Viva Carlos	8.	Equestrian Journey
2.	Cash's Stepping Up	9.	Pampered Ponies
3.	Forging Fiction	10.	Roosa's Horsey Life
4.	Dressage Pony	11.	Thee Ashke
5.	Project Gingersnap	12.	Jump Pretty
6.	Nanakorobi yaoki	13.	Poor Woman Showing
7.	No Hour Wasted