So Dandy as spent all of her life alone up to this point (spring 2009), she was born and she had only lived with her mom, no other horses until she was weaned and place alone in a small paddock... The closest thing to a horse there was cattle in an adjacent pasture. Since Dandy was my first horse and that she started this whole journey, I didn't have any other horses to put her with... board was a bit over my budget and we had the land to put horses on... we needed fences and a shelter, but we were planning on getting some horses in the future, so we still had to build it anyways.
So I brought Dandy home... to live all alone, again. I always felt really bad for the fact that she didn't have any friends and was actively looking for a pasture mate for her, but I didn't want a horse with special needs. I applied to foster rescue horses, but never got a reply, I guess the lists were so long... so I kept looking in the classifed ads for something that would suit me.
In the mean time, I've met my boyfriend and after a few months together, noticed his interest in horses. He already had horses as a breeding farm but the market was not there, so he sold the herd to loving families, we can still see some of them today when we drive around, he lovingly points them out. He showed some interest in coming along for rides with me, but we didn't have two horses and I would never subject a horse to double-riding, especially a young one like Dandy (except if it was an emergency situation). We had to get another horse!
I found a horse near where we live, she was an older mare, ex-racer that had started to ride... I thought it was perfect for him, I could work on her training while he could ride Dandy. We went and seen the mare, I tried her out, she did good. The guy had just rescued them from the meat pen and wanted to place them in a home, he was a kind of trader I guess. He also had another horse that was a friend of the one we were interested in... only one problem, she was in foal and untrained to ride. My boyfriend was interested in getting them both..... so we did... I would have quite a challenge retraining those horses... so... introducing Peg (Registered name: Mattsabreeze) and Pearl (registered: Minto's Foly), I don't have registration papers, since they were bount for meat, but I've done my research! These pictures were taken about 1-2 weeks after we got them home, they had been on poor pasture grass for one week... you can see how shinny they are... they didn't look exactly like that when we got them... They have also put on some weight, about 50 pounds in one week!! Also, our barn has considerably changed since then!!!! I'm just noticing that right now! Peg's pictures aren't really reflecting what she really looked like... I would say she was about a 2 on the scale, Pearl was a definite 1!
Keep in mind that Pearl was in foal... she looked awful for a mare about to foal (she was on her last weeks to a month in these pics).
As you can see, they lacked a lot of muscle tone, they were lethargic. Peg was in a bit better shape than Pearl, since Pearl had to feed a growing baby. They both had scars from their halters, scars from being whipped on the track and REALLY bad feet, you'll see in the upcoming post!
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