Farewell, Missy

That's the problem with quicky updates -- I forget things!

Y'all may recall that last summer we were given a horse by a friend of a friend: Missy. She's a 26 year old mare with very broken down pasturns in the back. Because of her pasturns we've been doing special shoeing and putting only small kids on her. The problem with small kids, though, is that they don't have either the strength nor the confidence to ride her assertively -- and an assertive rider is what she needs. It's always amusing, though I'm quite certain infuriating to both Ginger and the rider, to be watching a new group of beginner riders and oops -- there goes Missy walking the opposite direction as everyone else! From what I can tell she's put more students to tears than any other.

So because of some of these difficulties, Ginger was thinking of creative ways to keep her useful to us, and thought that she could probably find a student who would like to buy her, on the condition she boarded her here and we could use her when we needed to. Sounded like an interesting solution to me -- the only kink was that we never finalized the ownerhip transfer from the woman who gave her to us. Since we had the brand inspector coming out to do Jack and Chico anyways, we called the woman and asked if we could get that settled. We, of course, figured this was just a matter of tying up loose threads.

She, however had an entirely differnt take on the situation -- and decided that she didn't really want us finding a new owner for Missy, regardless of where she would be cared for. We discussed it for a while and reassured her that Missy wasn't being a burden, but on the other hand we also could not guarantee that we would keep her forever. So, her friend from Kansas who had given Missy to HER... decided she'd prefer to drive out and take Missy home with her.

Wow. HUH. Didn't expect that, frankly. But Missy left yesterday morning and I guess it isn't too much of a strech to say it's best for everyone. She got quite the fanfare too, seeing as how we had a crowd of teary eyed Missy-loving students who some how ALL were signed up for lessons starting yesterday. I think that touch -- totally serendipitous -- really helped put a nice spin on the departure as her owner could see how much she's been doted on for the past year. For 26 that mare looks astoundingly good:



So: After all the excitment of thinking we were up to 10 horses, then deciding that we would keep only Jack -- putting us at 9... Now we're back to a herd of 8. The search for more camp horses continues. Huum, camp just ended for the season...