The new mystery man

It has come to my attention that if I don't write something about the new beautiful four legged man in my life y'all might end up on my porch looking for answers.  If that's true though maybe I shouldn't write anything as I'd love to see you all in person. *insert angelic emoji*

Cuteness overload

His name is Bear's Accountant. Kind of a terrible name. But Bear could be cute, like teddy bear. He does snuggle well.  So I call him Bear, but I also call him Mr. Bean, and that's a funny story. I've actually been watching him for just about a year.  Last year when I was looking for my makeover horse I saw Bear and fell in love, only to be disappointed when the hubby informed me he was winning practically every time he went to a race. 

I posted this the first week in March 2016

Lest you think I was only in love with his dashing good looks, take a closer look at that picture.  He is standing on the race track (before he's even galloped) with a hind leg cocked while I chat with his rider. He walked on a long rein up to the track everyday, couldn't care less about the other horses zooming by him, and then walked back to the barn after training in just as relaxed a manner.  Husband was right though, he was winning regularly and still super sound, so I found Slider instead.

He was gorgeous in his own right

This year when we got to Phoenix we moved barns so that we could have more stalls, this ended up putting us in the barn next door to Bear!  Right about the same time we moved, he got hurt, bad.  He was in the starting gates (probably getting ready to win again) when the horse next to him acted up, making Bear act up too. He smashed his stifle, but it was too late and they were racing down the track. The jockey (who is married to Bear's Trainer/Owner) knew something wasn't right and eased him around.  Bear's leg was cut open and bleeding, when they got him back to the barn the vet cleaned it up and had to pull out fragments of bone and tissue. Everyone was broken hearted, he was a barn if not the whole backside favorite.  The vet said the first priority was keeping the wound infection free so that it wouldn't infect his bone/joint. It was touch and go for a while.

This is getting intense, here's a picture showing that it all turned out ok

It looked like the worst was happening and the wound burst open full of puss and nastiness.  His Trainer was beside herself and honestly the vet wasn't being much help, this was more like an injury you would see happen in a pasture and not on the track so it was out of his expertise.  I had experience with strange hard to heal stifle injuries so offered it up.  They started flushing the wound with betadine water a couple times a day so that it would start to heal from the inside out instead of healing up on the outside first and holding all that gunk in.  It worked.  The swelling went down and the wound healed.  He had x-rays throughout the whole process and the bones are healed quite well.

Enjoying turnout

About the time his Trainer was panicking about the prospect of putting him down because of the infection was the same time Hubby told her I wanted the horse if he healed up ok. She was shocked, you want him? I told her about my long standing crush and it was decided that if he healed that he would be mine.  I didn't know if it was really true or if I was dreaming so I commenced spying on him.  Alyssa and Aimee were always wanting more pictures of him, but you don't just go wandering into barns at the track to take pictures, hence the spying.  Mostly I'm just a dork so we started calling him Mr. Bean because that is who I looked like always peaking around corners.

Is that redheadlins or Mr. Bean?

Finally the day came that the wound was healed and the x-rays said he could go back to work.  I was giddy and promptly tried a bridle on him, because that's what we do when a race horse is going to be a sport horse soon.  So arrangements were made and he came to the barn.  It is up to him now about what his future will be.  He is cleared by the vet to do anything, now Bear (Mr. Bean) just has to tell us what that is.  If the answer is nothing, his race Trainer will take him back and he will go live in a nice pasture.  If the answer is low level stuff, I will get him ready for that job and then find the perfect person to do that with him. If the answer is something amazing, well then I have myself a new partner.

Goofing off on our first ride together.

And yes Mr. Bean also works as a nick name because accountants can be known as bean counters, sadly though I wasn't that witty when we started calling him that.