 |
| Hoosier Horse Park in 2008 with T-Bone (spot my dad in the background holding a cooler lol) and no that is not an approved helmet. :| |
I am not sure how many long LONG LONG time followers I still have, but when this blog started (in August 2007 holy smokes), I had a bay Morgan gelding named T-Bone.
T-Bone (AMHA registered name Final Chapter) was 16 hands and full of piss and vinegar. I acquired him in 2003 when he was 2 years old, and I was a naïve, horse-loving recent college graduate who thought I would enter journalism and thrive in that career. ha. ..... hahahaha. I made $19,000 a year, I had absolutely no business owning a horse.
 |
| Some random Hunter show |
After getting him started under saddle, I rode him around randomly for a year or two with no real purpose. We did Hunter classes at some Morgan shows, we jumped a bit. We did some mediocre dressage. But then after a series of .. tough .. events, I ended up moving him and myself to a dressage barn in Indiana where I started taking more consistent lessons. I started to fall in love with the sport. That barn and the instructors literally changed the way I thought and rode.
 |
| T-Bone at 2 years old. |
I did end up taking T-Bone to a couple of USDF rated show where we weren't particularly successful but got some scores in the 60s at Training level. He was a hot little number and required an exhausting amount of lunging just to be able to trot him less than 100 mph. He was never bad, never offered to buck or rear or deposit you. But he was bred to trot fast and that he did. Of course I knew NOTHING back then on how to finesse such a horse.
 |
| My dad cleaning my boots. 2008. |
He learned how to do some mediocre second level stuff. Shoulder in, haunches in, leg yield. He could do a little half pass, and a change occasionally. He was smart and nothing ever spooked him. He was as sweet as they come, although he could be a bully in the field to other horses.
 |
| The amount of flexion in my ankle is ... unhealthy. |
When 2008 rolled around, I was furloughed from work A LOT. I was already financially struggling, and this made it much much worse. I ended up moving T-Bone from the dressage barn to a smaller barn, where I was able to work off some of his board in order to keep him. But after a while, that wasn't even enough. Thanks to T-Bone, I had met a couple of fellow Morgan lovers who let me keep him at their little hobby farm for free.
 |
| I can't believe I am resurrecting this photo but here we are. I didn't even own a dressage saddle or bridle. And apparently no shirts that fit, or a helmet. |
 |
| Around the time I started to get a little more serious about this whole sport of dressage. You can see a difference in both of us. (The lack of helmet is cringe, I know. So is the skank top and half chaps. My god.) |
My financial and mental state in 2009 was dicey at best, so I made the tough decision to sell T-Bone. I ended up selling him to a wonderful lady who ADORED him for the past 14 years. Absolutely loved him, and somehow got him to go slow enough to do Western Dressage. That alone is a miracle. haha.
He was a lucky horse to have been loved twice by a horse crazy lady, and to have lived his last days so loved and cared for. His owner reported he died during surgery at the end of June. I didn't ask what kind of surgery, but we can always draw the logical conclusions. He was 22.
 |
| Loved peppermints from The PepperMint Dispenser. (my father) |
After I sold T-Bone in 2009, I took a small amount of that money and made a really stupid financial decision and paid $500 for another unbroke bay 2 year old gelding. From the same breeder, although this one wasn't a Morgan. This one was a TB/Hanovarian/Clydesdale cross.
And as a nod to his predecessor T-Bone, this gelding was deemed "Porkchop."
