When We Met

My old boss offered a 3yo colt to me one day after I had finished with the broodmares. I was hesitant; I was a one horse woman, but thought having a young horse to work on would be a good project. I had to ask my parents if I could get him and they would be against having an unhandled, ungelded colt on the property. I knew I could convince them otherwise. It was a piece of cake. I told them I would do some work with him and sell him on, make some pocket money. He wouldn't be here for long.

He was paddocked up a lane which wasn't used as much. Sometimes when we were moving mares around the farm, we could see two horses galloping under the pines over the back of the paddocks and we knew this was the colts. My sister and I could see a handsome young horse standing by the gate when we were going up and down the main farm lane each day. We walked down and few times and picked grass to feed to him. He was a strapping young man and liked the attention. My boss had said he was friendly and wouldn't be too difficult to work with after he was gelded. His name was Elmo and his paddock mate hid down the far end of the paddock. My boss asked if I had been to meet him yet and I said yes, I had met Elmo. My boss said oh no, it wasn't Elmo I was getting, it was the other and he was unnamed.

So we rushed off to meet the 'real' one. We entered the paddock and Elmo suddenly became quite intimidating. We shooed him off and edged our way around the paddock to meet a skinny, sick, sorry, sad wee bay Thoroughbred. Elmo wouldn't let him near the water trough or grass, he chased him into the corner and attacked him. Normally we would be careful about approaching strange, unrestrained horses but we went straight to this boy and picked grass for him and untangled his mane and tail, pushing his forelock out of his eyes, which were sunken and dull. We visited him daily, bringing him food and protecting him from Elmo.

The vet came and gelded him a few weeks later and we managed to get him into his own paddock while Elmo was sedated from his gelding. His shealth got infected and he had to go on a course of antibiotics which didn't help with his weight gain. He was very dopey for some time and leading him was difficult. He swayed and stumbled all over the place but we got him to the crush a few times to worm him and wash all the scours out of his tails and off his legs. We lead him home on the 28th December 2005. At one stage his reared up in fright at some yearlings running up the fence line and got away. He ran back down the road, up the farm lane and back to his old paddock. When my sister and I had caught up, he was coming back up the lane looking for us. Our second attempt was successful, my sister following us with the quad bike, urging him forward.

I named him Drummer, after Christina's gift hunter in the book Flambards. One day Drummer and I would ride to the hounds. He was never going to be anyone else's.