Yes, I’ve lost my mind. Yes, I’ve been saying for months that I have too many horses already, that I need to take a break from rehab projects and auction horses, telling myself that I am happy living vicariously through all of you and your kill pen saves for a while and just focusing on the horses I already have. Yes, I have a problem and I can’t really say I’m sorry about it 
No regrets!
On Friday afternoon I caught wind of a 4yo OTTB that would be at my local(ish) auction here in central-ish TX. Not Bowie. I bookmarked the pre-bidding listing and thought I’d keep an eye on him just in case, but generally young TBs fetch more than I am willing to fork over based on a couple of pictures, sight unseen, and I certainly don’t need another horse. Saturday rolled around and at about 11pm as I was laying in bed watching TV, I remembered the horse and thought I’d check in on the live feed to see if he’d gone through yet. As luck would have it, he didn’t end up going through until well after midnight and by that time there weren’t a lot of buyers left. This is not TB country, and I didn’t have to fight very hard to win him.
My DH gets a special mention here because he is a blessed saint who doesn’t bat an eye when I tell him hey, I bought another horse! even after I’ve been talking about cutting down the herd. He doesn’t throw a fit when I screw up his Sunday afternoon, drafting him to go with me to pick the horse up and he cheerfully holds the horse when I want to take a million pictures as soon as we get home.
Now, onto the horse. Identity unknown at this point, hopefully I can get his chip scanned this week and figure out who he is and why he ended up this way. His teeth generally line up with the advertised age I think, and he looks like a scrawny gangly baby TB who hasn’t grown into his ears yet. Guesstimating, he stands about 15.1 right now so not a big guy but he still has lots of growing to do. I will string test him later today. He was positively starving last night when we got him home and VERY enthusiastic about all the grass we have 
he was also very thirsty, and has drank his 15gal tub dry TWICE in 12 hours. According to the info he was brought in with, the seller had not had him more than a few months and he was in even worse shape when they got him (seller sounds like a bit of a trader type, IMO). He has a variety of ugly but superficial scars - one on the back of his left ear, another around his right eye, and both front legs have matching ugly scars on the outside of the cannon. He’s also got a split at the end of his tongue.
He walked off the trailer cool as a cucumber and has settled right in. He’s in one of my smaller grass paddocks for now, later this week I will move him into Bo’s pasture, the official rehab field 
it’s got plenty of grass and shade and a nice little slope to it that promotes healthy moving. I just need to fix the fence we had to pull out to remove some trees this spring and then it’s ready to go. Last night he was pretty meh about the soaked alfalfa cubes I offered him for dinner, but I left it with him overnight and the pan was clean this morning. 
Anyway, here we go again
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