Putting my search on hold for a couple weeks.

After driving home from Reno on the Saturday of the Martin Luther King, Jr Holiday weekend, I began feeling pain.  I think it started that night, but I’d been home alone and was putting all my video together about the Reno mare so I could send it to Todd and get his opinion.  So it might have just been bad posture causing pain that first night.  But Sunday it was different.  For the rest of the holiday weekend I wasn’t feeling well.  I had abdominal pain and no appetite (REALLY unusual for me!).  When I was still in pain on the morning of the 18^th I called the Doctor.  I got an appointment within the hour (didn’t realize that you can get into the Doctor really quickly if you tell them your abdomen hurts!)  They sent me to get an ultrasound immediately and from there I was sent over to the ER.  Turns out the pain was from Appendicitis.  Wow.  So by that evening my Appendix was out and I was resting comfortably in Sutter Roseville Hospital.  Luckily it hadn’t fully burst (I don’t know how it works but they said it had started to burst but stayed within some sac) so it didn’t cause extra problems.  I spent the night in the hospital and was able to go home the next afternoon.  I couldn’t do much for a couple weeks.  That left me lots of time to think about horses.

During my recuperation I got lots of advice from my trainer and my friends but the one thing that really stuck was “why start with a horse that already has an issue, and would have that issue its entire life?”  I had been willing to overlook the “off” lope of the first Palomino.  I was willing to overlook the club foot in the Reno Palomino.  But really, why?  So I decided to sadly pass on the Reno mare as well. 

I was devastated.  I’d been looking for a horse for 5 months at this point.  And all those horses on the spreadsheet hadn’t panned out for one reason or another.  I’d kept moving them to the “not an option” tab on my spreadsheet.  I had one left, but the woman hadn’t responded to my email a month or so earlier and I figured he was sold.

I also found another great site, www.iArabians.com and contacted them.  They market Arabians, and while the vast majority of the horses on their site were well out of my price range I still filled out one of their search forms.  I was contacted by them asking a few additional questions and they were happy to keep an eye out for a horse for me. 

I began expanding my search to the Western US.  I’d been to Los Angeles looking at a horse, to Reno, so why not?  There was a beautiful NSH (National Show Horse) Pinto Half Arabian up in Washington State.  But young.  4 or 5 I think.  I contacted her owner and she was going to have some video taken and would send it to me.  So I waited.

And I sent another email to the owner of the horse I’d found on DreamHorse.com a month ago, but who hadn’t responded.  I mentioned in my new email that I’d emailed before and was just checking to see if he was sold.  I got a response a couple days later.  Turns out in the form I’d filled out I’d left out the “c” in .com and my emails were bouncing back and she had been unable to contact me.  When she figured out what I’d done she succeeded in emailing me.  Voila! 

That horse lived in Vina, Ca.  About 1 ½ hours north of me, near Chico.  I’d driven plenty further to look at horses.  So while I waited to get video of the horse in Washington State I made arrangements to see the Gelding in Vina when the trainer got back from the Scottsdale Arabian Horse Show. 

I went to see him March 6, 2011.