My lovelies!

[Rhorsegirl80]

Hello all! I love that there is a forum for our own horses now and I've been waiting for a time when I could type this out! I have 3 horses and 1 miniature pony and I thought I'd just share their story since they have quite the stories! The first horse will be my competition horse King, then my retired racehorse Troy, then my rescued paint Getty, then my rescued miniature pony Ozzy! If you guys like King's story and want to hear the rest soon let me know, otherwise I'll find different times to type them all out!

My horse King or "Kingdom Z" is my very first competition horse. He is a Belgian Warmblood imported from, I think, Germany. I found it so cool that he even had his own passport I first found King after I had been searching for about a year to buy a horse. I had tried around 17-18 different horses before but either they were not the right fit or did not pass the vet check sadly. Originally my trainer and I were going to her friends barn to try a different horse but he also happened to be there and for sale. He is a big boy, around 16.2-16.4 hands, 7 years old when bought (around 13 now) and was super fluffy when I first met him. It was an odd place to try him since they only had a small garage sized indoor to ride in. I rode him in a circle and only jumped a few 2ft verticals but we clicked instantly. We brought him home for a week on trial and once he passed the vet check I was so happy!

Some of the struggles I dealt with on him was 1) He HATED blankets and ripped up multiple, whether it was in his field or in his stall. We tried no bite spray but he didn't care about that. What did work was mixing a spice into water to make a paste and then rubbing that on his blankets. 2) He was more of an Equitation horse when I competed in the Hunters. It was an easy fix though, just letting him poke his head out and stretch it with long and light reins and a few exercises with draw reins. One of the big struggles I had to overcome was his lameness. A week before a big show and our first show jumping 3ft together after covid, he started going lame. At first we thought he had been goofy in his field and was sore but it wasn't getting better. We kept him on stall rest and looked over his legs but didn't see or feel anything wrong. Even when the vet came out, they had no idea what was wrong. Finally we took him to a clinic where they looked him over and did a few tests. I'm not 100% sure what it was called, perhaps kissing spine, but it was affecting his legs and causing him to trip or go lame. They gave us two options for him, either put him down and collect the insurance money like most people do (HECK TO THE NO) or pay to have a special surgeon fly out and perform the surgery which might not even be successful, only take away the pain and soreness. Of course I chose to do the surgery, it was a LONG LONG year of rehab afterwards. Lots of stall rest with a very very energetic horse and then slowly starting to see if he would be okay to ride and jump again. THANK GOD he fully recovered and is back competing at 3ft with me again but it was a lot of getting our bond back and getting his confidence back up.