TRM Blog Hop: Before and After

Yay, pictures over writing! This blog hop from Cathryn is to show "before and after of their training progress, personality changes, or even of them growing up!" 

I know I've done variations of this post before, but I liked Cathryn's take on solid just before and just after--none of this "but look at the journeyyyy" bullshit. Fuck the journey. LOOK AT THE RESULTS. 

I was able to steal a few of the before pictures from Sarah, and if you're sort of new to the blog and don't know who Sarah is, let's do the briefest of recaps of The Story of Bobby.

Bobby was bred, born, raised, trained, and retired at Cobleskill where both Sarah and I went to college--only Sarah is just a wee baby so while I got foal, weanling, yearling, and two year old Bobby wherein I broke him for the track and sent him off to be a racehorse, Sarah was there when he came back and got stuck with OTTB Bobby before I bought him out of the program. 

Let's begin the journey there!

Before, 2010:

fresh off the track. he's never been this dark and shiny in the summer since this picture.
bobby is a pig and he loves his turnout which makes for a dirty, sun-bleached pone.

this angle is obviously not the best, but that pencil neck has plagued me for years

After, 2011:

february, two months after i bought him

This was right when I first started blogging, and I think there were maybe five of you that were reading back then, so what happened next was the boarding barn where I had both Bobby and Red was a literal disaster and were feeding my horses' grain (lots and lots of it that I was buying myself) to other horses in the barn. I couldn't afford to board two horses anywhere else, so Bobby went to go live with a COTHer so I could get them out of there.

Before, June 2011:

it was a fucking saga. let's not revisit it in depth.

After, December 2011:

then red had to be put down,
and the COTHer gave bobby back to me as one chunky monkey

Other milestones include....

First trail ride:

january 2011

august 2016

First jump:

january 2011

may 2015

First dressage rides:

january 2011

july 2011
(actually from our second ever show,
but i assure you the dressage test itself looked just as awesome as this)

may 2016
(pc: megan stapley, used with purchase)

First cross country jump:

july 2011

june 2015

First hunter show:

april 2011

I can't believe I don't have the pictures from Bobby's first hunter show--and first show period--anymore!! The above will have to do because his first show was with the small child riding him who I leased him out to. They did showmanship and several w/t classes and got ribbons in pretty much everything.

may 2015
now we do flat classes like this and just steal hunter princesses champion ribbons

Conformation-wise...

Look again:

february 2011

And now:

obviously a summer picture because he looks like a rabid yeti at the moment
#hurryupandcomebackclipperblades

It's sometimes hard for me to notice big changes when look at full body shots of Bobby because he still has the same, dopey baby head even at eleven years old. But the change in his body is so apparent to me in person--he's a big horse, and it's less in being leggy and more in being a massively built tank with a lot of presence once you're up close to him.

In conclusion? Don't fret, owners of young, awkward, probably a little ugly at times (a daily battle in Bobby Land), slightly crazy, and definitely bumbling baby horses! Beast mode transformation takes a long time to fully come about. Maybe one day you'll own your very own versatile Bobby Magee!*

*aim higher