The Adventures of an Amateur Equestrian: New kid in the gang!

So quite a bit announcement but I've bought my own horse!

It all happened rather quickly, with the space of a week in fact but now he is home with me I am excited to have him.
Our journey together is going to be a long one; he is very light at present and will need plenty of time in the field every day to fill up with grass and nice hay and feed morning and night and then with that I can start his rehab work to build up the muscle that has just pretty much completely gone.

What are the details I hear you ask, well... His name is Krugermac, who I have given the stable name of Freddie (like Freddie Kruger), he is 8 years old, an Irish thoroughbred, he was a National Hunt Hurdler and Chaser, he was in training with Gary Moore. He is approximately 17 hands and is dark bay.

We went down to Gary's holding/R&R, pre-training etc yard on Sunday to view Freddie and see what he is like. He was quite excited to be having a trot up and a walk around but was overall a very responsive chap who listened to instruction so with a lot of discussion and talks of how we have to see the diamond in the rough we got him and he came home with me.
I was really surprised that considering he had never travelled in a trailer before he walked on first ask without any hesitation at all and travelled home as quiet as a lamb.
I unloaded him to which he very cleverly assessed the ramp first before ambling off and with my permission towards a nice bit of grass that he eagerly put his head down to eat.
It would seem he hasn't bee out on grass for some time so he's very grateful to be out in a field with lot's of lovely grass to feast on to make him nice and round.
And boy does he need it! He sadly is rather light on the weight and muscle front so for the next few weeks he will be solely put out to pasture every day, have a nicely snuggly bed with plenty of hay and good hard feed so he can round off before I start from scratch with the ground work in hand, some lunging and finally when he is muscled up enough then I can put a saddle on and get on but I will absolutely not be doing that before he is ready.

It is going to take a very long time and is definitely a project as opposed to getting on him and getting out straight away. Once I can ride him then we have that saga to start with him having to understand a different way of moving and using his body. I don't think we'll be out competing at all in 2019 but I am totally ok with that. Slow and steady wins the race as they say and I think with bringing Freddie on the slow pace and making sure I do it properly will be what counts.

He has only been with us 2 days and is settling in to his routine nicely, will already stand tied up outside his stable while I put rugs on etc and is generally a very loving affectionate chap who just wants all the love and attention you'll give him.

I am very much looking forward to Friday afternoon when it's warm and sunny so that I can bath him, tidy up his overly long mane and give him a good scrub and trim. I know from grooming him already that he is going to love it!

Here are some photos from the last couple of days. I don't want to do a photo without rugs yet as I am aiming to do a 'when he arrived, X months later' in say 6 months time so we can really see the difference in his appearance.

So everyone, meet Freddie!