Herbs comes home

That same Thursday that Herbs passed the vet check, the credit card came out and shopping began in earnest. I picked up two rugs from my nearby saddlery as Herbs was coming with an empty wardrobe then headed for the yard to make his bed. That evening Kate came along to another saddlery with me and we picked up bins, buckets, bucket covers, haynets and anything else we could lay out hands on.

Friday morning was spent at the stables, trying to get everything ready for his arrival and Chris did an amazing job of keeping me calm whilst getting excited with me about every 2 minutes. I must had driven her mad - sorry Chris!

Herbs travelled beautifully, courtesy of Julia who wanted to check out his new home, and he arrived at lunchtime on Friday 30 th January. A nice warm stable awaited and he was treated to lunch once he had settled a little. The carrot part was quite entertaining; Herbs had eaten his first carrot only the day before after much coaxing and was still very suspicious of these strange orange things in this lunch bowl. Polo's? Forget it -why on earth would anyone want to eat those funny looking things? Soon enough carrots were the best thing ever but it would be another 18 months before he took a risk with the Polo's.

In terms of condition, whilst quite a happy chap, Herbs was very under weight. Julia bought him from Ireland and had stabled him at her place for just over a month so hadn't had any chance to fatten up after arriving in England. He was clipped out and undoubtedly did the whole boat journey without a rug and so probably dropped a lot of weight just during that time.

It was my job to "fatten and fitten" him and so I started him on three square meals and day and unlimited hay. Alpha A, Cooling Mix, Garlic, Oil and lots of veggies made up his Breakfast, Dinner and Lunch - I think he thought he was in heaven! On the Monday 2nd February 2004 I put him out in the field to graze and meet his new friends - how scary was that? Tail held high he galloped around the field like a lunatic, setting everyone else off, before finally calming down enough to sniff a few new people and then stamp around some more. He wasn't out very long, a gentle introduction was necessary and at Julia's grazing was restricted to one day a week so I knew he would love being out every day even if it wasn't for long at first. I had that first week off work and spent the week getting him settled before I had to go back.

Here are some pictures of Herbs that I took that first weekend which show just how underweight and un-muscled he was. And how dark grey back then!

And these were taken 1 month later on 1st March 2004...

Oh, I forgot. That weekend that he came home, he couldn't be turned out straight away because he needed worming so I walked him around a little but had no tack at all so couldn't even think about riding him. The farm has a huge sandschool so I let him have a run around in there on his own on Sunday and he galloped around like a lunatic, he kept coming back to the gate to see me before setting off flat out again for another circuit. Looking back it was a completely stupid thing to do, I was just so lucky he didn't decide to jump out and didn't hurt himself.