Monday 26 September 2016

Meant to be?

A wee tale with a happy ending!  Clare who is buying Ethel and Ella (along with her husband Shaun) asked me if I knew of any older Chamfrons for sale as sadly her five year old arab had started head-shaking badly this summer.  Well second hand Chamfrons are like hens teeth so we widened the search and the hunt was on for a suitable endurance horse.

This resulted in hysterical messages flying back and forth between Clare and me, "too short" "that moves, err, interestingly" "wow that has unusual conformation" "they want HOW MUCH?" and sometimes me subtly going "perhaps not that breeder..."  With a few exceptions once Clare got to the viewing stage it got worse, horses shrunk or were simply sad and neurotic.  Clare had moved on from "preferably no white legs" to actively pursuing Facebook pages like "Paint Horses UK" "Blagdon Cobs" "Coloured Horses and Ponies" and still nothing...

Then there were the pushy sellers and boy was one seller terrifyingly pushy, interestingly I had looked at her stock on Facebook and was very interested in them, not now!

So, another phone call, a spotty mare in Northumberland, ah yes I said I know her, nice mare, Mark broke her in, owner is lovely to deal with.  I said to Clare, "actually her owner used Arrayan on her dam, wonder what happened to that foal?"   We were both getting a little excited at this point so Clare asked the all important questions "do you still have him?" "yes" "will you sell him?" "YES!!" actually we were really quite giddy by this point.

Another long car journey North and Clare's herd of two roans will become three, he is surely the perfect endurance prospect, five and only backed, never had shoes on, been living on a hill at 1800ft, this horse is tough.  Now there were only four Arrayan Numa foals from outside mares, three of those foals are now playing polo in Scotland.  Clare finds the fourth by ringing up about a totally unrelated Appaloosa mare who is being advertised on Preloved with a head shot and is a mere 500 mile round trip away.

I introduce Brujo Numa (Arrayan Numa x Wearview Gypsy) like his father totally found by fate, I hope he proves to be just as much of a good buy for Clare as his sire was for us.



1 comment:

Cindy said...

That's a pretty awesome story! <3