Getting to Know You

I am happy to report that Gentry has settled right in. He's figuring out the new routine, and seems quite happy with it, despite being all alone at the moment. However, he's not completely alone as I discovered last night. Because I am neurotic, of course I worried about him non-stop his first night with us. I think I did about three night checks before I finally went to bed.

When I went out for the last check, around 10pm, I heard a squeal as I walked to the barn. My first thought was that Gentry got caught up in something. I have no idea what that something could be, as his pen is pretty much bomb proof, but nonetheless my mind went there. What did I find? A perfectly intact horse making friends with three horses that live caddy-corner to us. In the three weeks we've lived here I have never once seen a horse in that pasture. I had no idea there were horses there at all. So, he sort of has some buddies to whinnie at across the field. I am glad, as I feel terrible for him that he is all alone right now. Soon I will have to find a boarder or two...but that is a whole other topic.

Today my nanny was scheduled to come out in the afternoon, so I took advantage of my non-existant light work load at the moment, and decided to spend some hands on time with Gentry. I wanted to see just how he reacted to all the basics. First up was tying. I was told that he tied with no issues. Regardless, just the thought of it caused my blood pressure to go through the roof and I had horrible flashbacks from when I first started training Rose to tie. I am fairly certain I have PTSD from Rose as a youngster. Clinical PTSD. I briefly considered searching through my tack to find a blocker tie ring, but stopped myself. I took a moment to gather myself, put my big girl panties on and tied him with a slip knot to a darn post. I backed away ten feet ready for all hell to break loose.

He stood there looking at me like I was an idiot. He wasn't wrong.

What are you looking at?

Gentry ties. Like an angel. My blood pressure dropped and I went about grooming the little man. He likes grooming and he's good about his feet. I also took a moment to roughly measure him with my tape, which did not bother him in the least. My rough measurements put him at 15.15hh and 1100lbs. I will measure him again tomorrow with the vet, and also try and do a more accurate heart girth weight calculation.

But I digress, after assessing that Gentry has the basics down I decided to see how he'd react to more things. I threw Rose's old rain sheet on him. The red and black looked smashing, and he didn't care about it in the least. Excellent! Then I decided to see how he would do with clippers. I pulled out my handy battery powered clippers and let him sniff them. Then I turned them on and rubbed the vibraty handle all over him. He remained chill the whole time. Then I just went for it and clipped his bridle path and long ear hairs and some goat hairs. He stood nice and quiet like a gentleman. I was so pleased with him that I then proceeded to stuff about a hundred treats in his mouth.

He didn't complain.

The only thing that I purposefully did not expose him to was fly spray. The seller told me he doesn't like it, so I felt there was no reason to go there just yet while we are still getting to know each other. There will be time for that.

After our rather awesome get to know you grooming session, I decided to do a little in hand work on the lead line. I had him do some walk/halt/back transitions to get him tuned in to me, and then we worked on trotting in hand. He struggled with that a bit last weekend, so I wanted to work on it a bit before the pre-purchase exam tomorrow since the vet will be flexing and trotting him during the exam. He caught on very quickly and was very attentive to my body language and respectful of my space. I gave him about a million scratches and then reluctantly left him and headed back to the house to do some real "work" before my nanny left for the day.

I am smitten with this face!

So far Gentry has really started to win over my heart. I am looking forward to the vet check tomorrow, and really hope that nothing big and unexpected shows up. After the vet check I plan on longing and riding him if I can find the time. The one thing I took away from spending time with him today, is that this horse could be really good for my heart.

Happy trails and swooshing tails!
•Renee•