Mira's History, Part 1

Thanks for all the comments, everyone! They mean a lot to me :-)

Julie (photogchic) Mira is an Arabian, as far as I know. I don't have papers, so she might not be purebred... Just ordinary conformation, but definitely a great mind! She liked the orange, but it was pretty funny watching how LONG it took her to eat it!

Pony Tail Club - Thanks!

MiKael... :-D



Mira's story:
(I don't have all the details of her life, and most of the details I do know were passed on to me by someone who lives near where I got her)

Mira was used for mountain backcountry pack trips and possibly gymkhana most of her life. From her attitude towards life in general, I can tell she has done a LOT in her life.

I had been looking for a horse for over 3 months before I found her. My search radius was up to 150 miles away, but I had not been finding anything - then I saw the ad for her in the local paper! She was living at a local vet's place.

When I went to look at her, I admit I was not expecting much. For the price they were advertising, I expected weak conformation (bone structure) combined with plain looks. I was only looking for a healthy, good minded horse that I could ride a lot, so looks didn't matter too much, but conformation definitely did.

I immediately liked her owner, the vet, who struck me as an honest person who really loved animals.

When we went out to see Mira, she was in a pen with one other horse, and to be frank, she wasn't very impressive. Somewhat dirty (She's gray, so it's HARD to keep her clean!) she was small and didn't seem impressive one way or the other. But we haltered her and I led her over to the barn to be groomed and tacked up so I could ride.

It's odd, but one of the reasons I fell in love with her was her bad ground manners!

I know, I know, that's idiotic. But the reason her bad ground manners made me start to like her is this: She was forging ahead, bumping into me, and basically not paying much attention to me as we walked over. But, as I did a few subtle "pay attention" cues and adjustments of her position, and asking her to respect my space, she immediately responded! I could tell she was not a "deadhead", and that there was a good horse in there somewhat. I had a "feeling" that she mainly just needed a job to give her something to do. She acted up some while tied up and being groomed, but I could see the "horse logical reasons" for everything she did, and I figured that as long as she was fine under saddle, I wouldn't mind tackling some ground manners issues and desensitizing. In fact, I love training, so that would be fun!

We got her saddled, and it was on to the arena to try her under saddle... I was much less dubious than I had been, but I told the vet up front, that I would be taking a day to think about it even if I did like her a lot, because I had always sworn never to buy a horse right away. She was fine with that, and I got on Mira for the first time.


(To be continued tomorrow)


L