Here's Your Horse

I was fourteen years old the last time I deliberately set out to buy a horse to ride.

My parents did all the leg work on that one. If you can call it leg work when a friend of a friend puts your parents onto someone who is selling a pony, you ride the pony for 10 minutes and then your parents get another friend to deliver it.

To be fair, that pony did turn out to be one of the very best mounts I ever owned, but a just-started 3yo was probably not the best choice for a second pony for a tiny rider with little confidence and even less knowledge.

Over the years I have bought, sold, traded, bred, leased or loaned probably somewhere in the vicinity of 50 horses and ponies. Maybe more. I'm not going to try to count them. A lot of these came from friends - the tiny 2yo Welsh filly who was too rowdy for my friend's younger sister, sold to me for $250. The Standardbred I started riding for my neighbours, who I bought from them for $340. The ex-racehorse from another friend of a friend who moved to Darwin and sold me the horse for $5. The foal I impulse bought from a dealer for $99 who is now going on 30 years old and is still teaching children to ride.

There were several others who I bred, sold, and later bought back. Once I even traded a pony for a puppy.

I've watched long-time horsy friends become adults and set out, with a full grown-up wallet, to buy the horse they wished they could have afforded as a kid. In some cases they would fly interstate in search of the horse of their dreams. A lot of them ended up giving up their search and buying a young horse instead. Some brought home horses that looked good in the beginning but didn't work out for them. I came to realise that finding the right horse wasn't just about having the right amount of money and asking the right questions.

So when I decided that if I really wanted to ride again I would need to buy the right horse, not try to craft one out of what I already have in my paddocks, everything I ever learned about horses became relevant.

I've read so many recommendations for Standardbred horses for people at my stage of life. When you realise that there are a lot of steps between where you are now as a rider and the point when you will actually need that fancy horse you always dreamed about as a kid, it kind of changes your perspective. You can go a lot further with an ordinary horse that you trust than with a fancy youngster you're too scared to get on.

The Standardbred mare I bought from my neighbours when I was 18 years old was one of those horses I didn't appreciate enough at the time. She was a nice little horse, only 14.3hh but sturdy, who was bred to pace but kept breaking gait, so never saw the track. I literally threw a saddle on her and off we went.

Bear the Standardbred was safe, she gave me no real trouble, but she was not very glamourous and I was spoilt for choice. I owned her for several years and pulled her out of the paddock when I needed a confidence boost, but I eventually sold her interstate during one of my paddock-emptying phases.

I've always joked that a riding horse should be sound, sane and talented, but if you are on a tight budget you have to pick two of the three. While a Standardbred is not really made for mainstream horse sports, they are still horses and plenty of them are capable of carrying a rider at a walk, trot and canter, even over jumps, and with the added bonus of being less reactive and more tolerant than a lot of sportier breeds.

So, with a limited budget and a burning desire to give this riding caper one last crack, I set out to find a Standardbred.

I'd been watching the Facebook groups and pages for several months, getting a feel for what was out there. A couple of rehoming outfits in South Australia are doing great things for ex-racing Standardbreds and by following them I got to see a lot of horses go through their programs and emerge as proven reliable mounts for novice riders.

Once I had a little bit of money put aside, I posted my 'horse wanted' ad. I then set about sifting through the responses.

My non-negotiables were that I needed a horse that could carry an adult rider, but was not over 16hh. The horse had to be fine to paddock with others and able to be ridden in my treeless saddle until I could get a treed saddle to fit it.

I must have sorted through a dozen horses. Some, quite frankly, did not look sound or quiet. Some were for sale as they had been bought for beginners and were proving to be more horse than they could handle. One horse sounded perfect, but a ridden video showed that it very likely had a connective tissue disorder.

One response was about a horse just up the road from me. I had seen him advertised, but deemed him not suitable for a few reasons, most notably his price and the way he was described as difficult to catch and problematic when paddocked with other horses, particularly mares.

But since the seller was a neighbour, rather than just ignoring her I sent a message saying that I had a lot of 'girl power' already in my paddocks and needed a horse who was fine living with mares. She said I was welcome to come and meet the horse, sent me some photos, and reiterated how good he was under saddle.

And I thought, what the hell, at the very least it will be practice at inspecting sale horses.

So later that week I drove up the road and met my fucking destiny.

An ordinary medium-sized brown horse with an energy that hit me right in the solar plexus. Sporty by name, if not so much by nature, he was so kind, so soft, so tolerant. I kept my wits about me, after all I had come here to politely turn him down. I discussed him at length with his owners, trying to figure out where his issues with being caught might have stemmed from. I told them I had a couple of other horses to look at over the weekend and would be in touch after that if I was still interested, to arrange to come back with Matt and have a ride.

When I got home all I wanted to do was go back and get the horse. I watched his videos and looked at his photos. I was shocked at the instant connection I felt. But I thought maybe that was just how it would be with any horse I went to look at.

The two horses we had planned to look at that weekend became one when I decided that one of them was too small for what we needed. The other horse sounded good on paper, but there were no videos of him. He was a lot cheaper and described as very gentle and 'about 16hh'. He was in fact gigantic, way bigger than 16hh, there was no way I could have got on him from the ground, and with my shoulder problems rugging and saddling would have been an issue, although he did lower his head nicely for the bridle.

But the main problem with him was the woman who had fallen off him previously, who spent the whole time the owner was riding him telling us what a terrible horse he was, how he liked to go fast and needed to be ridden every day. When it came time for me to get on, the horse swung dramatically away from the mounting block, and I listened to my gut and ended the visit without riding.

On the way home. I told Matt how I had felt when I met Sporty. We talked at length about him and whether or not we could afford him. As we drove past their place, the neighbours were out with Sporty and one of their other horses, getting a ride in while the weather was good. We stopped and said hello. When we got home I said 'I want to go back and ride him!'.

I did nothing until the next day, aside from keeping busy to distract myself from thoughts of the brown horse. A few days later we went back and rode him.

Other than his ride a few days earlier, Sporty had not been ridden in three months. He behaved impeccably while four of us, with varying levels of skill and confidence, all had a turn at riding him in the windy conditions on slippery footing. When it was my turn he stood like a rock by the mounting block, and I climbed into the huge Western saddle without a moment's hesitation. Matt couldn't get over how kind and quiet he was.

The deal was struck, I went home to transfer the money and grab a headcollar, and then Matt dropped me off to walk our new horse the 2km to his new home. I relished the quiet walk down the dirt road, the peaceful energy between myself and the horse who had called to me so loudly, feeling the easy comfort that now we had each other.

I paddocked him on his own to begin with, mindful of his history of causing trouble when paddocked with others. I left a headcollar on him for the first few days, but he was soon walking up to me in the paddock and being caught with no problems, so I was able to take that off.

What I started to see was a horse who doesn't mind the company of others, and doesn't really like being on his own, but doesn't have a lot of social confidence. In a group he can absolutely defend his position and influence others, but he'd rather live the quiet life without all that carry-on. He possibly has trouble shifting from assertive paddock manager to gentle domesticated horse, hence not wanting to be caught when out in a group.

He now spends his days with Ava, giving him a bit of low-stress company, and spends his nights with his hay net, who doesn't have an opinion.

As it turned out my treeless saddle does not fit him, sliding back as soon as he moves into a trot - lucky he is used to a back cinch! The medium-wide gullet of my working hunter saddle sits nicely on his shoulders and doesn't shift, but the panels are too short for a horse his size. I got hold of a second-hand Wintec 500 on eBay, and it is being fitted this week. The bodyworker is coming a couple of days later to give him a once-over and then it will be time to ride.

Nothing is certain, although I have told Matt that if this horse doesn't work out he has permission to permanently ban me from riding. So far it has all been green lights with Sporty, from his walk home to his first hoof trim and adapting to his new routine. It's as though the universe has said 'Here's your horse. If you're going to ride, now is the time'.