Another horse…

History, Chapter 2:
So Andria has Makana. I want to get her involved with other kids with horses and we end up in a 4-H group… BUT they have their meetings etc. at Western Saddle Club, located miles from our house. No problem, we meet a nice family with two daughters in the 4-H group who volunteers to haul the horse (thank you Grays!!) and I can follow in my van. That’s fine for a while but I’m not real comfortable imposing on them, so eventually we go looking for a trailer. Being totally green I pay way too much for a piece of $hit trailer… but a little work on the wiring and the floor and hey, it’s better than no trailer at all, right?!?!
In the meantime we are also doing gymkhanas at Western Saddle Club and meeting some horse people. Gene Bray especially turns out to be the big brother I always wanted, and a kind of substitute father figure for Andria. (P.S. If anyone reading this knows Gene, we lost touch after he moved to Kentucky and we sure would like to find him again!!) He introduces us to his friend Gary the farrier so we have that aspect of horse care handled. And some nice folks at Western even let the two little girls, Lindsey (8) and Hilary (6), do a few leadline events. Boy was Lindsey ever proud of her first ribbon!
Back to the trailer – our first INCIDENT! Backing out of the trailer after a night-time gymkhana, Makana slips and falls, but it is dark and late and I am getting two sleepy little kids into the house and to bed, and Andria doesn’t notice until morning that Makana cut up both of her rear legs pretty badly. Of course by morning it is too late to have the wounds stitched so we have weeks of doctoring and no riding to get her back in shape. Andria feels absolutely awful, and so do I! Checking out the trailer we find it does have a rather sharp edge and Gary refers us to his neighbor who repairs trailers at home as a side job. I can’t even remember this guy’s name but we take the trailer to him and he says no problem… he can weld a round pipe along the sharp edge and HURRAY, problem solved… we have also learned to check the horse after unloading!! (Told you we were GREEN!) So we leave the trailer with him for a few days. And by the way, nice looking horses you have, the girls really like that little palomino appaloosa gelding, he’s a cutie! He’s your son’s horse but he is ready to move up so the gelding is for sale - really? How interesting. (Did you HAVE to say that loud enough for the girls to hear????)
All the way home and for several days after, all I hear is: Andria has a horse, we want one, we like that one at the trailer guy’s house, we’ll share… so I call for a price. Well girls, here’s the deal. I can’t afford to buy you the horse, but I CAN afford to feed him (etc.) – and while each of you has some money saved up, putting it together is only enough for 2/3 of the cost of the horse. So Mom has a great idea – we will go in thirds on the horse, and we can share - when you are at visitation with your dad, I can ride him too!
I’m sure you can guess what comes next: When we brought the repaired trailer home, it was NOT empty!
Most of my pictures of Applejack were pre-digital but I do have a couple.

Lindsey and Thorn, Hilary and Jack, probably 2001




The girls’ farewell:
Applejack - born ?, came to us January 1997, left us 2005 – RIP, awesome teacher!