Looking for our first horse

[This is an installment in "How we got into horses". See the right sidebar for other posts.]

My husband and I had given our oldest daughter (who was then 9) a full year of borrowing a horse for 4-H and it seemed her ardor had not cooled.

So we began looking for our first horse in 2005. (Wow, has it really been four years ago?)

My husband scoured horse websites. I looked at postings at the local feed store. Most were too far away to see. Most also said, "Needs work". I made flyers and put out the word that we were looking for a "kids horse".

The first person that responded met us at a pasture at the west end of town. The horse, a small bay gelding, had already been tacked up. I didn't know much about riding then, but I couldn't very well let on. I told the owners I would ride the horse since my oldest daughter wasn't with me then.

Either the horse was really not reliable, or I was nervous (most likely this), but the horse kept moving away from me. There were other red flags about the horse, which eventually led to me saying no, thanks.

What's ironic is that later, I saw an ad for this horse on the community bulletin board; he was being touted a "kids' horse". But a friend of mine who trains horses said the owner hired her to train this very same horse so it wouldn't go ballistic every time they rode it.

***
We saw a few more horses. It was February, which is a good time to see horses in a glut of a market (people not wanting to feed horses through the winter), but also the worst time because horses haven't been ridden in a while. One had cool medicine hat markings, but wild-pushy.

Nothing promising.

***
I told a friend in our church we were looking for horses. A few weeks later, she told me that she had a friend who was selling her gray quarter horse mare named Wixie. My friend was all compliments about her friend and her horse, and I decided she was worth taking a look at.

Next post: Buying our first horse