Bo

The past two days have been an absolute blur. Stacy PW and I attended the Mitchell Livestock Catalog Horse Sale on Saturday. As is the case of a catalog sale, they run the catalog horses through, then the non-cataloged horses, and then the loose horses. The sale started at 1pm (although we didn't get there until 1:30 and into the bleachers until about 2pm). The sale was over by 4pm. There weren't as many horses as I had expected. I also didn't take notes on descriptions, price, buyer, etc. like I should have.

Stacy PW and I chatted through the catalog horses but as the loose horses neared, we both got quieter and quieter. When they started running the loose horses through, I pretty much stopped talking altogether and my heart rate sky rocketed. In the loose horse pens was a group of horses with one desperately needed a new home. I was adimate that the horse was coming home with us.

I had though the horse would be run through first since the numbers started at 7001 (and that's the horse I wanted to bid on). But the horse ran through very near the end (adding to my already shaken nerves). We bid against the killbuyer and got the horse for $110.

Immediately following a gal stopped over and told me that the horse was a gelding and that she had owned him a year ago but sold him to go to college. She was angry that the horse was in that bad of condition. She called him Bo.

After the sale we went to go look at him but I honestly couldn't tell for sure if the gal was right about her horse or mistaken. I peeked under neath but never saw anything. I'll blame it on the wormy belly and winter coat. When we went to pay for him, the bill of sale said sorrel mare. So that's why I was a bit confused throughout Saturday evening and Sunday morning.

It wasn't until Sunday morning when I pulled the horse out of the stall that indeed the girl was right (I should know better than to think a girl wouldn't know her own horse). The horse IS a gelding.

He's been tucked into the hay shed stalls since yesterday. There is too much ice and he's too thin to be out in the elements. The hay shed stalls are open enough to get adequate sunlight and he can peek over and see the horses so he's not alone (but still quaranteened).

I'll hopefully have more pictures but our computer is dead, dead, dead and we are in the process of getting a new one. It might not be very soon that we actually get the computer up and running so there won't be any pictures until I can steal a computer and internet access.

But we are now the proud caretakers of Bo, a 10 year old National Show Horse. We did manage to get some pictures of Bo on our Facebook page. When we get computer access again, I'll comment on everyone's Facebook comments.

Keep your fingers crossed. Bo is not out of the woods. He is VERY VERY thin. I would put him as a 2 on the heinke (sp?) scale. It's hard to tell how thin he is because of the winter coat and wormy belly. I would put him worse than when Brego or Joe came in. I believe Bo will be our toughest one to get weight on as the girl I talked to warned me that Bo has a high metabolism. I'm sure I'll be burning through all my resources of hay, alfalfa, and grain quickly to get Bo up to the correct weight as fast as we can.

But throughout all of Bo's ordeal of starvation, he's still a sweet, people-oriented horse. He absolutely soaks in any human contact. He'll stop eating to whinny at me as I'm just standing there. This morning as I was getting his breakfast ready, he came over and put his nose on my head. I wonder now if he was giving me a kiss of thanks. :-) I'm already in love with Bo. Go check out Bo on FB (please). :-)