First up is Oberon! We listed him a couple of weeks ago and put up a video and some pictures. He went to his new home in the DFW area. His sale was interesting, because he definitely showed his slight gimpiness in the sale video. We did get some awesome pictures of him! We had a lady interested in him who came to see him the first weekend, but he wasn't what she was shopping for. Apparently she was looking for a beginner lesson horse, for which he was clearly not advertised. His new owner called me up in the middle of my busy finals week and started moving mountains to come down and get him. She was most concerned with picking him up and purchasing him, and less interested in seeing if he would work for her. This is the interesting part. She didn't even ride him before she bought him, and she didn't ask me to ride him. She didn't even know if the video was current before she drove down to pick him up. This is completely different to me. I can barely imagine buying a horse without riding it, much less sight unseen. Either way, she seems completely in love with him, and plans to call him Obe, since she also agrees that Yoohoo is a stupid name. On that same vein, I was talking to a girl at the farm that leases a horse, and she was telling me she used to work at Foxcroft back in the day. She didn't specifically remember him, but she was sad to know the farm was not what it used to be, and that horses were slipping through the cracks. She drove up when the new owner's friend was trying to load Oberon.
It was quite an ordeal. Initially Oberon walked right up and they squeezed him into a slant. He was very squished, so they decided they would reconfigure the trailer. They never tied him up. And so when they opened the slant again, he backed off the trailer very quickly (basically ran backwards), almost running over the friend of the new owner. Oops. Since he had no lead rope attached, I had to catch him, as the owners friend bemoaned the hazards next to where they parked the trailer. And so the saga started... the friend decided to go all horse whisperer on him, and tried out the patience game. You know, the one where you sit on the back of the trailer with the food bucket and try to overcome their fear of the trailer. That can be a powerful technique, but Oberon wasn't scared of the trailer. He was a little bit worried, but as we have discussed multiple times, he just needed a firm, confident hand to reassure him.
But this wasn't my party, so I just stood around, wondering when I could leave to study for my final. She tried walking him around the trailer, and then straight up. He threw his head up and locked his knees. She didn't want any help, so we all just watched. Then she said she was going to the trailer to get some motivation, which to me meant cookies or a stud chain. She came back with a rope halter. Blah blah blah, and eventually she realized her way wasn't working after about 45 minutes. So she said she wanted to move the trailer. We walked down to the barn and Robert had Oberon, so when they got the trailer set, Robert walked him up with some encouragement from me behind. He walked up and then backed off again, dragging Robert (a reasonably impressive feat) a couple more times. Then boom. He walked on and I closed the door and then we tied him. Robert snuck out the back door and everything was fine. Then the friend started wondering about tying him with the rope halter. Le sigh.
Oberon drove off to his new fancy life, where he was going to get four shoes and a visit from the chiropractor that afternoon before going into his stall with the auto-fly sprayer. I think he'll enjoy the life of luxury after slumming it at the self care facility ;)
To be continued...
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