Getting a new horse is something every horse lover is excited about. It does not matter whether mare or gelding, youngster or oldie. A new horse means new possibilities, it means a new friend but also a new responsibility. A new horse will need to get used to you, he will need to get used to the other horses and this might not be so easy. Still, if you tell a horse person that a new horse is coming, you will make him or her happy.
When my friend called me to ask if I would take and train her horse Rajmani, I was torn. On one hand I wanted to help her, on the other hand, we already had thirteen horses on our farm, plenty of work and little income due to the ongoing Corona pandemic.
What to do yet with another horse? Another mouth to feed and possibly a lot of nuisance as my friend had told me plainly, that Rajmani was a trouble maker and had already injured himself. Now he was a gelding, but he was still biting and giving her a hard time so that she had no more fun in working with him.
However, I enjoyed working with young horses and I absolutely love challenges, particularly those related to horses. I asked her to give me some days to think about it and pondered the matter for a while. It was true, I was free at the moment with less work and time to work with a young horse and it was a work I loved doing. We only had one yearling filly at the moment who required little work as she was too young to do much more than a bit of groundwork here and there and learn some basics.
Finally, I told her to send him to me. If he proved to be too much to handle or too dangerous, I could always send him back and by the end of the day, one horse more or less did not make a big difference.
All I knew about him were a few photos my friends had sent me since she had bought him last summer. I just knew, he was a black gelding, 3 years old and not easy. I was intrigued and my heartbeat quickened when I finally had made the decision.