A new addition

Our farm has acquired an unexpected addition.  Meet Stormy. 

She is a 9 year old Standardbred mare.  She belonged to my local friend who I ride with often, but due to some terrible tragic happenings, she is selling all her horses.  I had helped her work with Stormy last summer.  Stormy is very stubborn, hasn't had a ton of training, and combined with inexperienced riders, has caused her to have some opinions about what she does.  Last summer we made great strides with her and this summer she has been great, though still an opinionated mare.  But she is not mean and she is extremely level-headed.  She is very unspooky and a very secure trail horse.  Rarely anything riles her up...in fact, I can't think of anything that does rile her up.  She just needs to learn more refined leg cues, get some more miles and some lessons on listening to her rider.  I always liked her steadfast, though stubborn, nature.  And she has great feet (maybe even better than my mustangs), solid straight legs, and health-wise has been completely problem free to this point.  So I asked my friend to give me first chance when she sold her. 

I really don't need another horse, but this is a good one who won't care if I don't ride her everyday.  But I think with some consistent riding by me (I've been pretty good about getting her to listen and help my friend by occasionally riding her and giving her tune-ups), this mare is going to be an awesome horse.

And now, as a Standardbred owner, I have done a little research into the breed (I was completely ignorant about them before and only thought of them as Amish horses and race horses).  Based on descriptions I've read, Standardbreds are awesome horses.  Yes, they are race horses, but trotting/pacing races require a lot of strategy and listening to their driver, so these horses by selection are not hot-tempered at all and make great pleasure horses with a lot of athletic talent.  I feel like Stormy is a little short for the typical Standarbred, and she has a shorter more compact body than I've seen from the breed standard, but she doesn't come with papers, so she could be anything or mixed with anything.  She does have the Standardbred ears though.

She is a good mare and so far, my horses have accepted her very well.  Cody stays between her and Catlow most of the time and is definitely making Stormy toe the line, but Catlow couldn't care less about Stormy's presence and overall, the introduction was very low violence.  They are already all grazing side by side with Stormy barely farther away than Catlow and Cody.

You'll notice Chico isn't in any of these pictures.  That's a post for another day.