New Horse

Last Friday was a sad day to see Tessa going home. Tessa has been here on loan for some years but she is getting older now and probably has some athritic changes going on as she is now finding it difficult to jump or work in the school. Tessa’s owner will be keeping her and hopefully she can do some light hacking and part retirement now. Last week we went to see a 16.3hh cleveland bay x (Michigan). Leigh rode it in their school and it seemed quiet so we decided to have it on loan, it was mentioned that it is difficult to clip and it has jumped out of a few fields but it was in a field when we saw it. Sunday Michigan arrived and took up residence on the top yard. As monday is a quiet day here we decided to turn it out into the outdoor school around noon for an hour. Half hour later leigh went to put the hay in the stables and it had gone, on checking the stable and the school again it had definitely gone. Jen and Leigh had a look round the place and we checked the CCTV but there was no sign of it on the premises. The main gate was closed but we assumed someone must have opened it. The security guards at the manor, at the top of our lane told us no horse had been that way so we assumed it must have gone out of the gate left which is good because it is eventually a dead end. Steve took the quad and went in that direction. We went back to the yard and discovered due to the footprints where it had jumped out of the arena, it had then jumped into the paddock at the top of the lane and from there into the field adjoining and from there over two gates onto the road. Which is why the security man hadn’t seen it. I was getting alarmed now as this meant it was on the main road. A parcel force man came past and I asked him if he had seen a loose horse, he said he had seen a large horse being led on the road to Llanharry on his way here. We jumped in the land rover and drove in that direction approx a mile from home we saw a man leading him up the road. The man had found him (fortunately he had a head collar on) and was leading him along the road in hope someone would spot him, he had asked at a couple of places along the way and one woman had actually told him it was one of hers, so he let it go in her field then she discovered both hers were already in the field so it wasn’t hers, so he caught it again (rather brave for a man who admitted to knowing nothing about horses and this is a big horse) and carried on along the road. I think he was relieved to see us. I am still wondering what he would have done with him if he had got him home – put him in the garden maybe.

Posted on Tuesday, January 15th, 2008 at 12:12 am You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.