Tsar

So I think this is your first real look at Tsar. Rising nine yr old TB who was relatively successful as a racehorse and then apparently threw the towel in. He looks like an absolute dingus in this picture but he is very sweet and friendly. He is a little poor looking, even though I picked him up off of good pasture. He was being strip grazed (not by the owners) and I think the pasture was possibly too rich for him, because his digestive system took a while to settle down once he got here. Hay is like the greatest food for horses ever. He also is the coldest horse I have ever owned, he needs an underrug on and I haven't clipped him yet. Yay a three rug pony :/ once he is clipped of course, which I will do as soon as I remember to get my blades sharpened. So he is a tiny bit poor, and he has been out of work for a while so the topline is a little AWOL. He has been well looked after by his previous owners, and always had a good home and I'm very very lucky to have him, because all the hard work has been done, I just need to put the polish on.

Such a sweet face though, the little cutie. He has had a few naughty moments. First hack down the road the other day and he was pretty fantastic. This motorbike roared past in both directions and he was fine, we only ran into trouble about crossing the one way bridge which was ugly. Narrow with high drop offs and the water underneath was very loud. When he is a bit scared he almost accelerates at what bothers him and I didn't really want to trot over the really narrow one way bridge that was high in the air, while I had visions of the two of us plummeting to our deaths, and I hate falling. He refused and spun away, and when I tried to turn him back to the right, he braced and started going backwards and then threatened to rear. Circled to the left, refused again and jacked up to the right, threatened to rear again and then did have a tiny rear, which I think was supposed to impress me. I didn't get after him just insisted on the right turn and he gave up pretty easily and walked up to the bridge. I then led him across, because I don't know the horse and I'm not about to pick  fight on tarmac on the road. He crossed it nervously but fine coming home without my getting off. In times like this it would be nice to have a riding buddy! 

Schooling wise, he is quite behind the leg, and tends to put his head down but without relaxing his body and he is bad for falling out of his shoulders. That being said the quality of his canter is quite amazing and once I get him more in front of the leg and travelling he is going to be lovely. He reminds me a lot of a horse I used to own called Kruise, who was aptly named. I really like the horse without having ever jumped him of course. I think I will need to open his stride up to make the lines and get him putting more power down. He is a little spooky and careful with his feet and that bodes well for a clean jumper. I meant to take him in for a jump today but it just didn't happen, I'm crazy busy and its dark by 5.30pm.

I don't know how much people now about my life situation but I'm just farm sitting here for a few months and that's really neat and now I definitely want to own a farm one day because even though its super stressful I think it would be less stressful if it was my place and my stock so when bad things happened as they always do I wouldn't feel so so terrible.

Do you ever feel like you aren't mixing Dinner fast enough??!! Like you are being watched to make sure you aren't favouring one over the other??? Creeps.