The one where I have a stupid grin on my face

I mentioned Manny briefly in a previous post, but let me tell you a little bit more about him.

First off, Manny belongs to one of my friends. I remember hearing about him way back when I still took lessons there (2010), but I never met him until this year. I had originally stopped riding there when I ended up with another borrowed horse to ride at another facility.

Hye Mister Man aka Manny is a 2010 Thoroughbred gelding (Scrimshaw x Sparta) that was bought and trained for racing. However, he bowed a tendon at some point and never actually raced.

Fast forward to this fall when I was feeling sorry for myself and I posted on Facebook detailing that (I know, how old am I? Am I right?) and my friend said she had one for me to ride. I messaged back and forth with her, agreed on the finance part of it and then headed off for my first ride.

Even though Manny is a Thoroughbred, he’s not very motivated to move quickly. Ever. So being out of shape and trying to get him to move was a bit of a challenge. Manny had an unfortunate lease situation that was ended by his owner in an abrupt fashion due to poor horsemanship by the lessee. He wasn’t going to work as a lesson horse, so he was just sitting. He needed a bit of a slow acclimation back to work and an understanding by his rider that some days he’d need reassurance that everything was going to be okay.

A little background on me: bringing horses back into work who have had a bad experience in some fashion or another is kind of my favorite. I got to ride two horses as a junior that needed to be brought back slowly: A WB cross who crashed through an oxer and liked to stop, then a freight train on a TB gelding who had some less than stellar rides by a former lessee. Then my own TB gelding I bought as an adult who had a lot of training holes and liked to hop up and down off his back end.

While I love Thoroughbreds, I can’t ride the extremely hot, sensitive ones because I have a lot of anxiety and they always pick up on it. Things without a doubt go south quickly.

All that said, Manny isn’t hot, but he’s sensitive. He is 100% my type of ride and I love him to pieces.

Now for the part where I have a stupid grin on my face:

 

I finally got a picture with him last night and I couldn’t be happier with my new ride. I can’t wait for our first lesson next week and to plan our goals for 2020.