Adventures With Horsemanship: EVALUATIONS: Meeting Big Louie

EVALUATIONS: Meeting Big Louie

If you read the previous journal entry you know that today we had plans to hit the road and meet some horses that might fit our program needed. This morning we headed over to Marysville (about 1 hr. 40 min, away from us in Placerville if traffic is kind) to meet a really nice Quarter Horse Gelding named “Big Louie.”

Big Louie (14 years old) is sorrel (or if you prefer, chestnut) in color much like a slightly oxidized but shiny penny. He has a big blaze and socks. He is easily 15.2 maybe 15.3 hand tall. Nice frame and considering that he has not seen a saddle in over a year he had decent muscle tone on the muscles he had. His feet were in need of attention (at least 10 weeks overdue) and his topline was not conditioned at all. He really needs 50 to 100 pounds of muscle across the top line and hind quarters before taking on a rider of any size. We think that he may need his teeth floated and get up to date on shots but that is a maintenance issue that we expect in all “”project horse” candidates. With the condition of his weight/muscle/ topline and feet plus the fact that it had been over a year since he took a rider we only test fit our saddle. We felt it would be unkind to Big Louie to attempt a ride. He certainly did get an energetic ground school lesson though.

We met and did the horseman’s handshake. Michael went into his pen and rubbed on him, let B.L. get several big sniffs and let the horse perform an inspection of the rope halter/lead rope. Michael did a couple of attempts at lateral flexion and got the hind end you move away from him several times before we left B.L’s pen. A 40 years walk with stops and starts (this is a good thing) to the round pen along with some hindquarter yields and everyone was think when we hit the round pen. Obviously B.L. had some round pen experience because as soon as the halter was removed he began to lunge himself! He demonstrated a nice trot and then a lope giving us several laps of each before realizing that Michael was just standing in the center of the pen not doing anything. B.L. walked up to Michael and “checked in” with him. Very cool. More trotting, loping, getting two eyes and direction changes happened. B.L. has never been taught to turn into the center to make a direction change (Most horses are like this) but was very aware of Michael’s position in front of and behind the shoulder. He would stop and look at us when we got between the shoulder and nose. By the end of the session began to figure out and looking in and giving “two eyes” was the answer. He got lots of rubs and praise for this. We even slipped him a cookie and the down-low. We then hooked up the line, did some “despooking”, backing, yields, flexion and even introduce the concept of “ground school circles” to B.L. He did really well considering that he has not had much done with him in a (by our standards) long time. He seemed willing for the most part. Not too over-reactive and generally acted like a gentleman. We spend close to two hours with him. We also got to meet some pretty cool draft breeds that live at the ranch. It was a good morning.

We really like this fellow. Because of his current fitness level he is a longer term (6-12 month) project but he is very handsome and his size makes him marketable IF he continues to have a positive attitude and work ethic. He is a strong candidate. The current owners are willing to sell him to us for our budget or place him in training (especially after what they saw us get in such a short time today) and get a nice, fair market price. While he is “grade” he could, with proper conditioning and polish be a $2500-$3000 horse in today’s market. If we don’t get him we REALLY hope one of our friends does so we can continue to play with him!

Laurie & B.L.