The thing about schmuckish behaviour, is that often you don’t learn from your mistakes.
See, Schmucks often double down on their poor choices…And that, Dear Reader, was me.
However, before you throw this down in disgust, you should know that this one has a very different outcome. This particular horse is still entrenched in my life, much to the bewilderment of every single person I’ve met.
Including myself.
Anyway, it was only a matter of days after I’d waved farewell to The Flashy Fuckwit when Anth came to me and said
“I found a horse on Gumtree, do you want to look at it?”
To which I responded “No thanks. My bum still hurts, there’s a scrap of my pants still flying from the fence and I don’t even know if I want to ride anymore”
“You sure? It’s a really cool dark, dappled grey….”
And before Anthony even finished the sentence, I was walking towards him beckoning to see his phone.
And as easy as that… that’s how Round Two of Schmucking began.
So there we were, a few days later greeting this serene creature while the owner said “I thought I’d keep his mane long because I know how girls like the curls” while he stroked the horse’s, slightly crimped mane.
A few days earlier I’d contacted this man because I’d assessed his advertisement and had decided the horse would be suitable for the following reasons:
He had just turned 4 and was barely broken in.
He was no longer wanted by the previous owner, so she’d given him to a man called Kevin from Kyneton…. And it turned out Kevin didn’t want the horse either.
So for a chubby older rider with a curious mix of a big dreams and little confidence… it felt like a fabulous fit 🙄
Moments later I was astride the horse in Kevin’s enormous western saddle. However the stirrups wouldn’t go nearly short enough, which is a reasonably common problem when you’ve got legs the length of a penguin 🤷♀️
But off I went, jiggling around and trying to steer in a circle before Kevin cheerfully called out
‘I don’t think I’ve ever done a circle on him before’ – which instead of setting off any alarm bells, gave me a wave of relief.
“Phew… at least that explains that it’s him not me” I thought, as the beautiful grey horse twisted his neck and crossed his jaw while his body went banana-ing off in the opposite direction.
Over the following 3 minutes or so, I realised that the horse didn’t really go, didn’t really stop and didn’t really steer.
But he was deep, dark, dappled grey and that’s why he was bundled up and driven home that day 🤷♀️🙄
And later that night, trying to justify the $4000 we’d spent on another horse I announced to Anthony.
“Four or five weeks should do it before I’m out competing on this horse” as I settled back to shlurp my Sav Blanc, daydream of victory and look for supplements that would keep him dark grey for longer.
Kevin had mentioned that the horse now known as Shady was a Thoroughbred crossed with an Australian Stock Horse but aside from that we knew nothing….
So as I sat there feeling smug and swilling Sav, I decided to post in the ‘Brand Search’ Facebook group to track down his pedigree.
And before I’d even got back from filling up at the fridge there was the familiar ‘ding’ of notification.
And as people started tagging each other and the comments rolled in, I felt a wave of discontent descend.
This was not what I was expecting.
I’d enjoyed the relative anonymity of the transaction with Kevin because I thought I’d discovered a diamond in the rough.
Realistically, my ego was still rubbed raw from the fact I had ‘ruined’ a horse with a reputation for being quiet and dependable…
The fact that people knew Flapjack as Captain Reliable in his old life – but I couldn’t even stay aboard for a single circumnavigation of the house – had caused a chink in my egotistical armour 😳
However, I held on tightly to the fact I was a competent teen rider more than two decades earlier and decided it was best to blame the horse instead.
And as much as I wanted to protect my own fragile feelings…I was not entirely oblivious to the judgey nature of the horse world and I had a suspicion that I had a bad reputation brewing.
So to think that my new horse was also well known in the horse world, especially amongst the noisy, commenty folk on Facebook, caused me some concern.
As it turns out, Shady had been featured in one of those enormous ‘Colt Start’ events by the grandson of Ray Hunt, who’d flown in from the USA to do so.
No biggie 😳
Furthermore, he’d been auctioned off at the conclusion to raise money for a horsemanship foundation.
And according to the rumour mill – he’d been purchased by a lady from Victoria, who’d been full of dutch courage for the auction 🍾🥂
And now I knew she’d passed him off to Kevin from Kyneton few months later, for reasons that would become clear to me very, very soon.