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Simon The Skewpaloosa

This is Simon as a baby. Simon was born in 2002 and came from the same place as Sam. He had been brought in a consignment of about 20 coloured and spotted with the odd solid coloured foals from Exeter Market.

I had decided that I wanted a coloured filly as a companion for Harry, and trotted off to Bruce to see what he had. What he had was all these foals he had just bought from Market! They had all been weaned abruptly on the day of the sale and in my opinion were too young to have been weaned. However, such is life and I chose a really nice coloured filly, but Simon caught my eye. I fell for him there and then and said I would come back with the cash and Ray. I was told that we couldn't have the foal (still the coloured at this point) as Bruce was not back until Sunday (this was the friday). So, I duly returned on the Sunday with Ray, the cash and the lorry. Well, the coloured filly was GBP200.00 and I took Ray into the "shed" where the foals were. I told him that the filly was ours for the taking but that I had "spotted" (sorry about the pun) something else I liked. I said that he could choose. The coloured filly, or the spotted colt. He chose the colt and Simon was ours.

One problem. None of the foals had obviously ever been touched by human hand, certainly not in kindness.

Bruce waded in and rugby tackled my poor foal and pinned it to the floor asking for a headcollar. Simon, not to be out done kicked him firmly in the ribs and escaped. He was once more brought down and the headcollar was placed on him, but it was too big (it was pony sized) so a knot was tied in the headpiece and my colt had on his first headcollar. We cajoled pushed and pulled and in the end, half carried him to the box where he took one look inside and ran in.

Getting him out the other end was a feat in itself, but we did it and got him into the stable where, once again, the vet and farrier were booked. One problem, he was wild! And, when I say wild, I mean WILD!. If we looked over the door he would try to make a new exit at the back of the stable

Well we worked with him over the months and he became a loving boy who would play with you but never roughly. Still, the time came for us to have him gelded, mainly due to the fact that there were mares living in the field next door to where he would be playing out and I don't think I could have got away with denying paternity of a spotty foal!

Vet was booked to do Simon and Harry (saving cash you see) and he duly turned up with the wonder drug, Ketanin. Now Ketanin is a marvelous thing. Immobilon you see, the original knock out drug for horses was not readily available now due to the fact that if it touched you you had 10 seconds to inject an antidote or you were dead! Ketanin would solve this problem as it wsa safe for humans and better for horses. Yeah Right!

Ketanin does not work on one in a hundred. looks like I got three hundred horses then cos it didn't work on any of mine. With all three of my boys, Sam, Harry and Simon, Sam woke up in the middle and was consequently gelded twice, one at a time boys (don't cringe) over a period of 2 months. Harry and Simon just loked blankly and refused to go under. Problem was, the vet missed a vein and hit an artery leaking serum into the neck and chest area which blew up like a baloon and developed 5 grapefruit type cysts which when they burst varied by degrees from projectile pus to cottage cheese. Harry was done at this time. I couldn't let Simon be done as he was too ill. He was booked in again several months later and that was cancelled due to courier companies refusing to carry immobilon due to the "dangerous nature" of the drug. The fact that they had been carrying it for years with no ill effects had no bearing on things. However, on the 4th attempt, Immobilon was sourced and the job was done neatly and quickly with no problems whatsoever.

Simon is now a happy, healthy gelding, getting into trouble wherever and whenever he can. Costing me money whenever he can (he seems to be accident prone - twig in foot, running through two, not one, two barbed wire fences, etc etc) Had he been a child, he has so many accidents the NSPCC would have been called to see if I was a baby batterer.

SImon will be broken to drive this year (done at two with driving horses) but not worked. Just given the basics and then he will be turned away to think about things. We may show him a bit this year too. I will post any developments as they happen.