Echo gets an upgrade

This poor little mare came to EverStuff Ranch today. I'd been seeing her advertised here and there on the internet for a while. She was listed the first time for something like $1200. She's six years old, only halter broke. Cute little head, nice bloodlines. She's actually related to Spooker Dude, the paint gelding we used to have. I saw her listed again a few other times, each time at a lower price. I wanted to go take a peek at her each time I saw her. None of the pics I saw were ever really good pics.



Monday I saw her listed again on a Facebook group for horses in Idaho. She was listed at $450, needed to be sold by Friday or she's going to the sale. My heart felt so bad for her. So I sent Scotty a message on FB that said I wasn't asking if we could buy her, just look, she's got Cowboy Spook bloodlines. I sent a link to her pedigree. Tuesday we went and saw her.

It was kinda awful to see her. She was small, thin, looked wormy, I thought she might have lice. The other horses she was with had bald spots on their legs and around their heads and necks. They all were thin with dull, sparse coats. The "pasture" they were in had nothing growing in it but weeds. What hay they were feeding was nasty. Old grass hay that looked like the stuff I didn't want to feed to cows, rotted and brown. The fencing was dangerous, falling down, sagging. Bits of rubbish and trash were scattered around, boards with nails sticking up were right by the empty feeders. I wanted to get her out of there and take her home right then, but I didn't have $450.

Scott and I talked it over all the way back to Gooding. She was really too small for him to ride and we agreed our next horse would be a replacement for Ben, for him to ride. He wanted a stout gelding that could pack him around in the mountains all day. This little girl was so not that. She was small, maybe 14.1 hands high on her tip toes. She had a kind eye, wanted to be where the people were, and didn't have any huge glaringly obvious conformation faults.  I came up with the offer and Scotty agreed. $250 in cash and 12 bales of hay if she didn't sell by Friday. They accepted. We kinda felt so bad about the other horses we threw in a few more bales when they brought her out.

She is small. She does have lice. She needs some serious groceries. Now that most of the winter hair is off her you can see her hip bones, her ribs, the vertebrae at the base of her tail. She's in the round pen in quarantine until we can get rid of the lice.