Last Monday Heart and Bella moved to their new barn! I'm not sure what the horses thought but for me the move made me happy and sad all at once. I'm happy to be at a barn with all the facilities I need to properly train the two. It's a gorgeous barn. We have a little stall tract all to ourselves. There's an outdoor dressage arena with mirrors, a big outdoor jumping stadium, an indoor arena with mirrors and huge fans, a round pen and a cross country field. The horses have nice stalls and a big field to be turned out. What more could we ask for?
But at the same time the move did make me sad too, because I had come to love our little private barn. It was nice to have the horses almost in my back yard and with Bella and Heart being the only horses there it was almost like having a barn of my own. Our barn owners did so much for us, which I am still very thankful for. All in all I enjoyed being there very much and I believe the horses did so too. I guess there's pros and cons to everything.
So Now we will enjoy all the pros that come with this move. Heart definitely likes having sand underneath his feet when training. He seems thankful for the softer underground, which is much kinder to this 17 hand horses sensitive little feet. I hope it will help him on the road to recovery from the damage caused by an unreliable farrier. Don't get me wrong. I liked this farrier a lot until he decided not to show up anymore and not return calls either. By the time I managed to organize another farrier Hearts feet were beyond bad and I was freaking out. A couple more days and I'm sure I would have lost this horse (fortunately Bellas feet held up better). So I am more than thankful to our new farrier Sloan who pitched in as soon as I called and did an amazing job at getting Heart moving sound again within a couple of weeks. Sloan had quite a job to do with poor Heart who was in a lot of pain when he first met him. I've never seen Heart rear before or ever since, but only pulling of the old shoes was quit a job that time. I don't want to even start about how hard it was to get the new shoes on with only the minimum amount of nails to keep them on for at least a while. I was pretty impressed by the before-after transformation of the hoofs. But my two favorite things about this farrier are his patients with the horses even if they really act up like Heart that first day and most important that he is absolutely reliable! He will always call back and drive by as soon as possible if a horse pulls a shoe (which Heart has discovered he loves doing :( ).
No pictures of our new home yet, but I will do my best to get some within the next couple of days. For now here's the link to their website: http://www.cottonmeadowsfarm.com/
