Kira gets a new Boyfriend.

In the last nail biting installment I relayed the bad news that Ebony developed arthritis and we retired her.  Well, there was a little time that passed between the time she was diagnosed and the time we actually retired her.  Before Ebony came to live with us we had two horses, Beamer and Mariah.  Only one of those horses was well enough trained to do Westernaires.  When Ebony came to live with us we now had two horses that were well enough trained to do Westernaiers.  And the girls took advantage of that.  Kira joined trick and Kumi joined Horse Romans.  (Sorry for the blurry picture)

That is Beamer and Ebony and Kumi doing Romans.

Kira loves doing trick and Kumi love Romans.  We worked on Ebony's arthritis and we were able to get her a bit more comfortable.  

But we had other problems.  Kira earned a spot on the Junior Grand Entry team.  At Inter Club, Junior Grand Entry gets to open the show.  They carry the American and Colorado flags and do a special drill to open the show.  The big problem we had came near the end of the drill.  Kira did a special exit which required her to be alone at the end of the arena.  Ebony did not like being alone so she pranced a bit and would then take off as soon as Kira gave her her head.  Since Kira was standing in hippodrome, when Ebony took off, Kira would almost fall over backwards.  Not good and we were having problems getting her to calm down.

When Kumi was doing Romans she has two horses tethered together.  As they went around the arena Ebony worked hard but because her leg hurt, she started tripping more.  If she went down while tethered to the other horse, well, that would have ended badly.  And she was stumbling more each class.  It quickly became apparent that if we continued to use Ebony we would ruin her legs.  There is no excuse for doing that so we had to retire her which left us right back where we started, two sound horse only one of which had the training to do Westernaires safely.

Anybody figured out where this is heading yet?  

Well, it happened in early March.  Kira got a new Boyfriend.  We went out to Yuma Colorado and rode a few horses.  Not as much as we would have like because the wind was blowing at 45mph with gusts up to 60mph.  We had to ride in the isle of the barn.  But it gave us an idea of the horses temperament and the owner had no problem with us returning the horse if id didn't work out for us.  Ladies and gentlemen, meet our new quarter horse, Boyfriend.

So the CityBoyWithHorses who started out with one horse boarded at a nice little stable no has four horses living in the back yard.  Four horses.  Three horse trailer.  3/4 ton pick-up.  This math is not working somehow...