[SummerBliss]

So I've got semi-exciting news. But I better start from the beginning so it makes sense lol

About a month ago, I made the choice to sell my mare. She's the first (and only) horse I've ever had and I've only had her for a year. I'm selling her because she's more than I can handle for being a first time horse owner as well as that she's insanely smart, green broke, and high energy which makes it really hard for me to handle her because I'm not a super experienced horse riding. So after a year of just not making any progress with her in the saddle, I figured it'd be best that she'd go somewhere where her full potential can be reached and live a full and happy life.

Well, after a looong month of no one really being all that interested in her, someone finally called me. He says that he has a brown and white pain gelding that's 9 years old and very calm even lazy. He hasn't been ridden too much in the last two years, but before that, the guy had trained him at 3 years old and his daughter rode him after that up till two years ago. This guy apparently goes hunting and goes on long 24 mile rides so his horses don't spook easily and aren't deterred by gun shots. And that's about all I know of him so far.

So this Sunday, I'm going to be heading out to the guys place to take a look at his gelding. Once I've done that, he's going to come take a look at my mare. If he likes her, and I like his gelding, then we'll do the trade. However, I don't want to make another rushed decision like I did with my mare. So I'll see his gelding a second time on Thursday with a woman who's a horse professional to help me know if he's in good health and other things I should look out for.


Depending on how Sunday (and possibly Thursday if he wants my mare), I'll either be getting a new horse and starting a new adventure, or my time with horses will be at an end for a bit until I feel ready to take on another horse.:runninghorse2:

 

[horseylover1_1]

Well first off you are to be commended for realizing that this horse simply isn't a right fit for you, and decided that you two need to go separate ways. That is a hard lesson for horse lovers to learn, but once learned and applied, you have much happy horses and riders. I also think it's awesome you're not giving up on any horse because the first one didn't work out. That is awesome!

Definitely keep us posted.. and post pics of the gelding if you can

 

[SummerBliss]

Well first off you are to be commended for realizing that this horse simply isn't a right fit for you, and decided that you two need to go separate ways. That is a hard lesson for horse lovers to learn, but once learned and applied, you have much happy horses and riders. I also think it's awesome you're not giving up on any horse because the first one didn't work out. That is awesome!

Definitely keep us posted.. and post pics of the gelding if you can

Thanks I thought about selling her two times before this but figured I just hadn't given it enough time to give ourselves a chance to really bond or make progress. But after a year, I've decided it was time for things to change.

And I'll definitely post some pictures of the gelding if the current owner allows it (since I may not be getting the gelding, I don't want to step on any toes about posting pictures of another persons horse without permission).

 

[SummerBliss]

Sunday, July 2nd 2017

So I went out to check out the horse the guy wants to trade me for my mare that I'm trying to sell. The gelding's name is Sunshine since a little boy asked to name him when he was born and the sun was shining hence the name Sunshine. But I think it's a cute and sweet name . It also turns out he has one blue and one brown eye. I didn't get a chance to get a picture of his blue eye but it's pretty^^.

Here's some info about Sunshine:
1. He was trained to rope, pull a carriage, pull hay, trail riding, having guns shot around him due to hunting, been in lakes/water, have the owner stand over his neck and then lift his head to slide the rider onto his back, being ridden bareback with only a halter.
2. He's a registered 9 year old quarter horse.
3. Just over 2 years ago the man gave the horse to his daughter who lived a little ways off so she had the horse moved to a field that was closer. She then moved, leaving the horse behind but refused to sell it. So for 2 years he ran 'free'.
4. During this time that he was left by himself, the person that owned that field abused him. He even has whip marks on his back legs.
5. When the guy went to go pick up the horse since he found out that his daughter wan't riding him anymore, he couldn't even catch him. He had to ride out there to rope him in order to catch him and that was a week ago.
6. He now hates having his back end touched. That consists of his midsection to his rear.

Today, when i saw him, the guy called him and the mare that was with him over with a bucket of oats. But as soon as he tried to put the lead rope around his neck to catch him, the horse turned away and started to walk away. I was given permission to feed him some oats so i managed to get him to come over to me and eat the oats. I started to pet his neck and shoulder, also slowly reaching over to pet the other side of neck. I then took the lead hope and got it around his neck with him not even caring and just continued to eat oats.

Then the guy came over to give me the brand new halter but as he approached, Sunshine started to back away and lift his head when the halter was brought up to him. I put down the oats and took the halter to try putting on the halter on myself. Once the guy stepped back and it was me handling everything, Sunshine calmed down a little and I managed to get the halter on him. After that, I was able to lead him around and get him to trot as I jogged and stop when I asked him to. But it became clear that he really did have trust issues but also wasn't high strung or too spooky. He was calmer and just wanted to turn and walk away if allowed.

I was able to touch his backend at one point which was a big thing. But the horse refused to co-operate too well with men. So it goes to show he’d been abused by a man but not a woman since he didn’t fear me as much as he did the guys.

You can see it in his eyes and the way he is that he wants to trust again, but is hesitant about it. So now I have to decide whether or not I feel like taking him on and showing him the love he so very much deserves to get. I’m going to be going to look at him again on Thursday with a woman who knows waaay more about horses than I do to make sure he doesn’t have a hidden injury and in general, give an outside point of view of she thinks of him and the two of us together.

But I already know I feel a connection that I never shared with my mare, Echo, when I first met her. So possibly this could be the right horse for me to take on. And if I end up deciding not to, then I probably won’t get another horse for a while since I wasn’t originally looking to trade horses or get a new one so soon after selling Echo.

So we’ll just have to wait and see how things go. And here's some pics of Sunshine

 

[seabiscuit91]

Sorry editing do not realizing this was a journal and was giving advice!
My mistake! Good luck he's very cute!

 

[SummerBliss]

Sorry editing do not realizing this was a journal and was giving advice!
My mistake! Good luck he's very cute!

Go ahead and give advice if you like^^ I'm open to hearing what others have to say and your advice might even help me out with making my descision :smile:

 

[SummerBliss]

Friday, July 7, 2017

So yesterday ended up being pretty busy. I went to go take another look at Sunshine to decide if I really wanted him and brought along a lady who's been around horses a whole lot longer than I have to get her opinion on the horse since she'd notice things I wouldn't yet. Her overall opinion was that he looked like a great horse but just needed some loving attention and a bit of retraining.

So after thinking about it for the last 4/5 days, I've decided to take him. When I saw him on Sunday, he was such a calm and lazy horse I was almost worried that he'd have no spunk in him or be motivated to really move faster than a walk. But yesterday, he was feeling good and wanting to run with the mare that he was in with.

It was good to see he wasn't dead calm to the point he'd only like to walk. Although, his bucks aren't much. When I let him go and the two ran off for the trees to escape the bugs, the mare threw in this huge bucks and kicking up her legs as they galloped. However, Sunshine's bucks only consisted of a big tail swish with his feet maybe getting an inch or so off the ground as he galloped.

So I'm going to call the guy today and see what we can arrange with the trade and moving the horses and whatnot. I'm also thinking I'll start a vlog to track the progress I make with him so in a year, I can look back and see how far we've come.

 

[SummerBliss]

Thursday, July 12, 2017

Well, to start things off, I got my new horse! He's made so much progress since the first time I saw him which shows he really does want to trust people and have that connection again which is amazing. He's supper sweet and very responsive. I've only had him a total of 2.5 days now but the guy who had him before was working on getting his trust up already so that was good.

So I've said before that his name is Sunshine BUT...he hasn't been called that for the last two years so I feel like renaming him since Sunshine just didn't really suit him to me anyways. So after much debate and talking to many people about what they thought would be good names, I settled on three possible names. Scout, Jay, and Sunny. What I ended up with was....None of them!! lol. For some reason, I thought of Thor. That seemed to fit, but at the same time, wasn't quite right. I also heard the name Thunder somewhere and liked that, but again, it just didn't seem 100% right. So that led me to come up with this name.... Thor's Thunder! Or just "Thor" or "Thunder" for short haha.

And now you know the origin of Thunder's name ^^. I'm also planning on starting a YouTube channel of my time with him to keep track of the progress I make with him. And that's where I'll leave things for now. Here are some picture of Thor's Thunder

 

[SummerBliss]

Thursday, August 3, 2017

Hey, sorry I haven't updated this in a while. I got busy with a few things. But hopefully I'll be able to give updates a bit more frequently now.

So I realized there were definitely some issues he had when I really started to try to work with him. His biggest one was being caught. For a week, it didn't matter if I went up to him with or without the leadrope, he'd start walking away from me. He was in a field with a yearling who absolutely adores attention so that little guy would follow me around all the time just to get a pet. His name's Charmer which I think suits him completely.

Well because Charmer was constantly coming to me and obviously enjoying himself, Thunder would watch and slowly, he'd start coming closer to me too. Eventually, I got it to the point that I could pet his head and his neck without him turning away. By the end of the week, maybe a day or two into the next week, I started to try to actually catch him. I would have to trick him with oats to get him to come to me. But as soon as I'd go to step beside his neck or he felt anything going around his neck, he'd turn away and start walking off. So it would take a few attempts before I finally was able to get the rope around him. And once I did, he followed me just fine. Though he'd raise his head to try to keep from the halter going on.

A few days later, the horses were moved into a smaller area as there were other horses that needed the big field more. The smaller area still had lots of room for them to run around in though. So during the middle of the second week I had him, he started to get a bit easier to catch and would let me approach him fairly easily. Though he'd still want to turn away as soon as the rope was going around his neck. But now, during this last week and a bit, he's become a lot easier to catch. Last week Wednesday, he was feeling extra frisky and kept running around like crazy to try to avoid me. He ended up running into a smaller paddock area that was attached to where he was and I closed the gate behind him and changed the game on him. So that instead of him running away from, I was making him run. It didn't last long. Only like, three whole loops and I let him stop. He realized it wasn't fun to run away from me after all and let me walk up to him just fine and catch him. After that, it's been getting easier and easier.

On Sunday, he called out to me for the first time ever when he saw me arrive. And he started to come over to me too. Though once he noticed the lead rope over my shoulder, he decided that maybe he didn't want to come after all and took two steps away. But that was it. He only took two steps away and then let me catch him. And now yesterday, I didn't bother to try hide the lead rope at all and he still called out to me when he saw me and even though he could see the lead rope, he didn't turn away at all. For the first time, I was able to approach him and catch him with no difficulty at all

Another thing that was a problem for a bit was him not wanting to pick up his back feet and holding them nicely for me. But I got a little bit of help from the woman I'm boarding him with as to how to get him better with that. He stills gives me trouble once in a while with one of his feet but otherwise, that's getting much better too.

Current thing to work on: backing up and giving me his head. When I ask him to back up, his head goes up and he will reluctantly take a step back. He doesn't like to drop his head nicely either when asked to so those are the current things I'm working on.

Also, I have started a Youtube channel for Thunder and I. I only have one video on there so far and it's of the day I traded my mare for Thunder. Also, the way my sister and I talk about Echo at the beginning, it jokingly. Echo was always very easy to catch so her coming over to me when I went to her pen was normally and not something that took months to do. And that day in general was very long. At the beginning when we were loading up Echo, it was 10 or 11am. By the time we were bringing Thunder into his new field, it was more like 5pm and we hadn't had lunch. But overall, it was a pretty good day.

YouTube Channel: Neon and Thunder https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCCMm2idIB1hpCB6mJLzk2Sg

So that's all for now. I believe I've caught up on everything that's happened since I got Thunder. If not, I'll cover it in my next post.
*The reason for Neon being in there is because I have an art channel as well and my name's Neon Explosions so I wanted to keep my channels linked together by incorporating the Neon part

 

[SummerBliss]

Friday, Sept 8, 2017

Oh my goodness! I can't believe I actually forgot about posting here >< So sorry! Hopefully I manage to become more consistent, though I don't know how often I'll be posting due to a few things.
So a decent amount has actually happened since my last post. Thunder and I have come a decent ways, but there's a few things that I'd like to change that would allow us to create a true bond.
But to spare the boredom of an overly long post, I'll try to condense what has been going on first before getting to the really recent stuff.

- was getting Thunder easier to catch as well as him starting to trust me
- worked on getting him to behave when picking up his feet which he now does very nicely
- discovered that he basically 'refuses' to back up due to no one making him back up for the last couple years
- started to call out a greeting to me when he sees me
- got bullied by another gelding when introduced so was immediately seperated
- was put with a few mares which he likes
- had our first ride a little bit ago where i learnt that he knows voice commands
- decided to be annoying and hard to catch by using the mares as a buffer between him and I until he finds a way into a bigger field (or i finally catch him)

So all that is in order of what's been happening from oldest to most recent. Of course there's other stuff inbetween that but that's just the main stuff. The biggest thing right now is that for a bit, he was getting easier to catch but now, he's decided that he'd much rather run around and become increasingly difficult to catch.

I'm thinking this is mostly due to the fact I can't get out to be with him every day as I have him boarded in a place that's about 20-25 mins away from town so I can only go a few times a week if I can. So I'm not managing to do enough 1 on 1 handling with him. Then I realized, when winter comes, I may not see him very much at all since it'll be dark out already by the time i'm done work so i'd only be able to see him 2 times a week, and that's if the roads aren't too bad. Which then means I wouldn't be able to see him for a week or more on end which wouldn't help things at all.

That has brought me to the conclusion then that I should board him at the stables over the winter so every day I can ride him and overall, just have more 1 on 1 time with him so that we can create a better bond. We already have one started, but it's not the greatest yet.

One thing that I love that he does is turn his head in to me for a kiss. And after I kiss his nose, he turns away or sometimes will give me a kiss on the cheek with nose in return which is just adorable XD


By the way, anyone know of any good ways to post pictures on here? I was trying out one site but it's given me nothing but problems so I'd like to find another way if possible.

 

[horseylover1_1]

You can attach pics by going to the "Go Advanced" button on the bottom of the reply box. Just attach the pics. I recommend doing small attachments because I think you are limited to how much you're allowed to upload.

Good to hear that overall, you and Thunder are doing well! What helped me teach my filly not to run from me in the field was every time she walked away from me in the field, I would take her straight to the round pen and move her feet until she did a join up with me. I don't know if it would work with every horse, but it works amazingly with her. She also doesn't JUST associate me with work. Sometimes I get her and just love on her and turn her right back out.

 

[SummerBliss]

Sunday, September 10, 2017

So I've got more things figured out now. I was contacted by a guy that isn't using his stall in the stables this winter so he's willing to let me co-rent it which is awesome. So now I'm going to have Thunder in the stables for the winter. I also have hay arranged so I just have to go pay for it and pick it up, but that's not going to happen till around the 24th. I also have to get him vaccinated before he can go into the stables so I've asked the lady I currently board him with if she could help me out so he gets to be vaccinated on the 18th. I've never vaccinated a horse myself before so I figured it'd be best to get help with that one.

I went out to see Thunder again today and decided that rather than try to catch him, I was going to get him to come to me. He's naturally curious about me and seems to like me for the most part, so I figured I'd get him by me at some point. I simply hung out with him and the other horses, just standing around. And sure enough, he eventually came over to check me out, though was still careful about getting too close to me so i couldn't catch him, though I wasn't planning on catching him today.

He did finally come to me enough that I could pet his neck and have a good moment just hanging out with him. I think that's a better result than all the times he's just run off on me. That's about all that's been happening recently and hopefully getting him into the stables and adjusted to them goes smoothly since he's never been in the stables before.

Attached pictures are of the last few times i've seen him and my first ride him.

 

[SummerBliss]

Saturday, September 16, 2017

There isn't much that's happened lately since I've been busy getting things ready and lined up to bring Thunder into the stables.
I've finally got it arranged to get him vaccinated on the upcoming Tuesday so I'll post again then to update how that went. I'm guessing it's going to take a little bit to catch him since he's been really bad with that, but hopefully he'll prove me wrong and be easy to catch.

While I'm out there, I'm also going to grab some of my stuff to haul into town and to the stables to get the locker set up and ready for when he gets to brought in.
I'm also going to talk with the stable manager so I can finish signing up for the stall and get the key to the locker. I've actually already gone in at least twice to talk with her but she's either already gone by the time I get there, or there's an event going on at the stables and she's busy so I can't talk with her. So I'm just gunna go in there after I've dealt with Thunder's vaccinations since she's supposed to be there during that time and no events are going on that day.

I'm also working on finding different things to do with Thunder once he is in the stables to build our bond more and teach him how to back up as well as work on his ground work since he hasn't been trained/been made to do it in quite a while.

 

[SummerBliss]

Wednesday, September 20, 2017

Managed to vaccinated Thunder yesterday
He was hard to catch again like usual but at least we got him and once he was caught, he was calm and followed along easy enough.
One thing that made things a bit harder was that it'd been raining all night and most of the day too. At least it wasn't raining too much at the time I went out there. Thunder didn't seem to care about the rain either.