06/30/2025
Pull up a chair, this is one of the long ones. I’ve been waiting for the right time to introduce my new mare, going back and forth on whether or not to keep waiting. Then I decided we rarely see anything but carefully curated posts of success, myself included, so here’s the other side of things:
I bought a new mare, and we’re having a rough start to our partnership.
Chantilly Moon is a kind, classy European bred thoroughbred mare born in Peru and imported to race here in the U.S. Very much “my type.” I picked her up over a month ago with plans to get back out competing.
Since then, I’ve gotten to ride her five times…
Tilly, as she’s known in the barn, has had two emergency vet visits since she got here, two scenarios that none of us could’ve prevented without a suit of bubble wrap armor. Through all of that though, as frustrating as it is, I’ve gotten to know her better faster than I would have otherwise. This all gave me the chance to understand who Tilly really was and how she felt about life.
Her first sutures had to go in her left ear, but she presented a rather panicked reaction at being touched at all once she was in distress. It took a lot of slow work to get her patched up.
This go round, the sutures are on the front of her face and she’s needing doctoring in several other places as well; cleaning, medicating, wrapping, and spraying everything with Alu-Shield. Not only was she completely unproblematic to catch, she has been an absolute angel to doctor on my own.
It turned out Tilly was pretty apprehensive to the idea that people could be helpful to her, especially in high stress situations.
I’m not sure I would have really understood how insecure she was if not for our bad luck, which meant she wouldn’t have started to feel better in her own body until much later.
She’s looking like she wants to be a pretty quiet horse if given the chance and I look forward to getting her healed up and back to it!
