Heaven!

I have decided that J.R. is a little slice of heaven. As his personality came out he is just a doll.
We had his feet trimmed yesterday and they were pretty bad. He had double soles and his angles were all dipping into the inside. He was not the best boy for his trim but he could have been worse.

He is so funny he immediatly goes out and rolls after you have done anything with him. So I let him out after trimming and he immediatly rolls and tries out his new feet. I can not tell you how much better they look. He has a ways to go yet but the farrier said what saved him was that he had been stalled on concrete. It wore his feet down some so they were not curling over. He said it looked like they had not been done in years.

He is looking so much better, not all sunk in and waspy looking. We are giving addatives for sand colic to help if there was any mild impaction from not having water in his stall. The boy eats anything so its good he is not picky right now. He has gained some weight and his muscling looks much better.

Since he was looking so good I thought I would see if I could do a riding evaluation on him. He stood pretty still for the tacking up part (nothing I would not expect out of an arab in a new place). Its hard to find a saddle that fits as he is still lacking the top line muscle but that will come with more groceries and more work. I choose a simple egg butt snaffle for him as he is so light and responsive on the ground in his halter. One of the stories the woman told me was he had learned to toss his head because her daughter pulled to hard on his mouth. Another possible answer was the bit they put in it or the fact they never had his teeth floated.

Took him in the round pen and did some free lounging with him, which he didn't seem to mind anything. Got on him and put him through all three paces and he is nice and easy walk, trot, canter. All very smooth and he is SO light in the mouth. I did not even touch his mouth for most of it, he neck reins like a dream. He stops good and has a beautiful back on him. He will make a great mount for someone once we get him fully back to were he should be.

I still after years of seeing this have a hard time of knowing how and why people can do this to horses. How do they let such a wonderful horse get to this point? He is older but not useless and he is trained to a T, he has wonderful bloodlines and with weight and muscle he will still look like a million bucks. Its sad and I know this will never get easier, nor will I ever understand it.