Well, y'all have seen that Tiki is gone. On one hand, I am so blessed and grateful. On the other, I am sad and devastated. Honestly, what has helped me through this whole process is to emulate LR. How is that? Well, over the years she has had a few wonderful ponies and an amazing junior hunter. When she graduated high school and went on to college, she sold her wonderful, amazing show horse and jumped into the routine of being horseless but going to school and riding as much as possible! I wanted to be selfish and keep Tiki forever... but I am going through a HUGE change in my life and a horse makes that way more complicated. "Why not lease?" you ask. Because I'm a control freak! And I have seen SO many come back broken, it really is sad. And I am a concerned horse mom, there is no way anyone leasing a horse from me would be happy because I would be so picky about his care, training, etc. In the end, I had to let him go completely. I found my own 12 year old girl (actually, she found me!) and when she rode him for the first time, she fell in love!
Not gonna lie, selling a horse in 4 weeks is incredibly stressful. I didn't get much interest until I dropped his price to under 5 figures, and all of a sudden I had 4 potential buyers with a 5th lurking in the shadows...and 9 days to get it done!!! When his now owner scheduled a vet check for the Friday before we left, I was fine with it. I figured they wouldn't spend the money to vet him unless they were serious. What nearly killed me though was what I saw bright and early Friday morning; a cut worthy of stitches right in the center of his chest. Looked like a vet had sliced open his chest about 4 inches across with a scalpel, and left the skin flap hanging. I wanted to throw up. Tiki has never even been on antibiotics before under my care, much less had to have stitches!
The vet came from south GA to do the exam, and said yes, it needed stitches. He had to ignore it for the time being and do the tests first. Despite what had to be a painful injury, Tiki passed everything with flying colors. Relieved, I expected things to come to a close as the vet stitched him up, but turned out x-rays were part of the deal..but the vet didn't bring the machine which meant we had to seriously figure out how to get them done in a timely manner. Luckily, we got it scheduled, and I shipped him down south to get x-rayed. Talk about stress!!!
Fortunately, nothing alarming was found. An old racing injury in both front feet, and mild changes in the hocks. So, negotiations were made, papers were signed, I am horseless, and a little girl's dreams came true.
I don't know yet how much blogging here I will be doing for the next little bit. I have found a barn online I want to scope out, but riding is super low on the totem pole right now. I will try my hand at blogging about riders other than myself once I get my computer reconnected. I will own another horse at some point, this I know, it will just take time. Y'all take care, I'm not going anywhere:)
