Thistledog's Farm

 Yesterday afternoon the seller emailed to tell me the horses were on their way.  They left late Tuesday, and he said they looked so good, those two big horse butts in the trailer with their pretty new (warm) blankets on, ready for the ride.  He expected them to get to Virginia Wednesday afternoon, which they did.  Jason emailed yesterday to say they made it; they were good big mares for sure, and the filly was silly but not mean or bitchy like the one he’d had to contend with the first time this woman tried to haul, when she brought just her own two down and left mine waiting in Michigan.

So he just posted a quick note to tell me they were there, and said he’d write more later and outline his proposal for this project.  I am delighted to know the transfer from Michigan to Virginia has finally happened, the horses are safe, and they’ve made a good impression on Jason, who will be training them to harness and work. 

The “project” is just that – these horses were imprinted at birth but handled very little since then — they were up for sale as having “potential” for working in harness, which they have, based on their bloodlines, all good working animals there — but they’ve had absolutely no acceptance training, no fundamentals at all yet, so they’ve a ways to go.  We weren’t looking for green horses, we were looking for a team already started, that could jump right into the logging jobs he and the apprentices are working this winter… but I moved too fast on this deal, and so the original plan is more complex, will take longer and cost more,  for my haste. 

We’d already agreed we wanted these mares for their breeding potential,  though, and when their lack of training came up I bridged the sticking point by making clear to Jason he would be paid well for the service, if he had the extra time and inclination to take the project on.  I’m not looking for “something for nothing” here, I understand the task involved and since I’m not there to do it myself, and he’s been training horses for many years (and I’ve seen his horses in action; the results are fabulous), I can’t pass up the chance to get my horses started right, no matter what the cost.

I’ll tell you this much:  run the tape ahead three years, to the day I haul them home to Kentucky myself, and begin my own round pen work and basic driving exercises with them – me, a beginning teamster, with work to get done so not a lot of time to start from scratch and patiently progress both myself and a beginner team to significant working capacity.  Instead, I’ll bring home a team of horses that have been started well by a Master with the best training for their working purpose I could possible hope to give them, and who’ve had several years of working in the fields and woods under the tutelage of good horsepeople trained by the same individual… that’s a hell of a deal, just what I’m looking for, and will be worth every dollar spent.

It’s a new year, folks, and this is a great start to it.