Introducing Alfredo

Alright so enough with the teaser photos of this horse, and the story of how he came around. Tango found a home with the kid who has been riding him, so I had room in my herd for a new horse. I had a pretty limited range of things I was willing to look at, age/color/breed/cost-wise as this newest addition had to be a short-term resale project. But if I could find my unicorn, he could come home. 

And lo - the unicorn was located.

This fellow is coming six, he is a solid paint, and he's a really exciting horse to me. 

Minutes after being unloaded at my farm

His second day at the property

Third day: this was the day I took him on a trail ride, held the buckle the whole time, and CHATTED ON THE PHONE WHILE DOING IT 

 But seriously kids, don't be a hero. Don't take baby horses for trail rides and ignore them while being on the phone, even if you DO think you're riding a unicorn.

In the rain, his very first nighttime ride. 

Third jump school ever? Literally ever?

This is a very sweet horse. He just loves everyone and there's not much that scares him. He gets a little irritated at the canter sometimes and will sort of suck back, canter in place, and squeal, but he's so funny while he does it that you can't even get mad at him. 

And before I sell him as perfect in every way, he's green. So green. And makes baffling decisions, like cantering instead of stretching to the bit, or forgetting how to steer, or being deeply annoyed that I would suggest he stay on the bit in a walk-trot transition. 

But what I like about him is that he's sensible about his deep upsets. He has kicked out, and even offered a baby buck, but what the hey, the horse is five years old and has approximately 60 days of dressage training on him before he came to me. 

Before that, he was mostly trail ridden in company, so while he's been all over and done all sorts of things, he doesn't have a lot of independent thinking installed yet. And here, a video so you can see some of his issues: 

So it's a journey in front of us, but I like the damn horse so much already (resale project resale project resale project) that I think it'll go pretty smoothly.