Happy New Year/Anniversary

January 1, 2013  Happy New Year! 

Every year,  New Year’s Day starts a new beginning.  In looking back over the previous year, if it went well, we have a great start to continue building on in the next year.   If it was a less than stellar year, for whatever reason, the New Year is a time to get a fresh start.  And I always look at the New Year as my anniversary.  Today has been 39 years since I bought Buddy.  After I had decided for sure to buy him, Dr. Elrod was nice enough to let me join a couple of my friends and rent one of his barns down the road from his main barn.  They already had their horses there and I was going to lease a stall as well.  We were all college students and shared the chores and did all the work.  Everything was set up and ready to go, I just needed to make arrangements to finish the transaction.  No problem, horses need to be fed every day, so Dr. Elrod and many of his clients were at his barn even though it was New Year’s Day.  It was a beautiful, brisk, cold day when I moved him to his new home. 

Sorry if I sound a little nostalgic over a horse, but Buddy was pretty amazing.  Over the next 18 years, we travelled many of the roads, fields, and woods in the area.  He even toured the bottom of a ditch one time, but that’s another story.  He was a great listener when I needed an ear, a partner when I needed a ride and someone I could always count on.   I think it was due to Buddy that I ended up living a mile from the farm where I bought him.  He’s also responsible, in a way, for my being married to a fellow horse lover for the last 36 years.   When I was three weeks overdue with my son, and was desperate to try anything to go into labor, Buddy was my safe and gentle horse who plodded along with me on his back.   He gave the best pony rides to my kids as well as nieces and nephews, but could challenge me when he felt like it.  Buddy was rock solid and healthy, until I lost him to colic a few months shy of his 23^rd birthday.   He was the reason I love American Saddlebreds and will tell anyone that they are the perfect all around horse. 

 

 Here I am with Buddy on 1/1/74, the day I bought him. 

 It was cold and snowy, just like today.