03/17/2024
THIS!
You need a Digby.
Let me explain. You may think you need a Totilas, or a Rothschild, or a Stroller, or a Frederik the Great, or a Secretariat grandson, or whatever else matches your particular fancy...but you don't. You need a Digby.
You might have the ambition to sit that enormous trot, or jump those grand prix fences at speed. But you also have the adult amateur's physique we glean from working a desk job and riding one hour a day, from managing a household and children, from dealing the banalities of life.
A young, hot, fancy horse requires time, effort and know how. Either you're going to put it in, or you're going to pay someone else to do it for you, and most likely the latter. Or, worst case scenario you do neither and you end up winning a no-expenses-paid trip to the emergency room.
So, if you want to enjoy your riding, you want a pet you can visit, who enjoys your company, who you can pamper, and relax with.... you need a Digby.
Digby, in reality here at LOTW, is our older school master. He can tote a complete beginner around the trails one day, and teach a lesson on flying changes the next. Digby is fit, educated, and bomb proof.
Is Digby maintenance free? He sure isn't. He gets equioxx, extra senior and alfalfa feed, a hoof supplement, and everything is soaked... He's a senior, and he needs the kind of care and maintenance his body requires. Is he perfectly sound? Well, maybe not on a cold day, without a proper warm up. But he is strong and comfortable in his work.
Digby is the kind of horse where you could go on vacation for two weeks, come back, throw a saddle on, and walk on a hack alone, at dusk, on the loosest of reins. You could stick him in a trailer and head to a schooling show or off to a state park he'd never seen before and be safe at either venue.
So please, when you're looking for your next partner, do not buy the horse you aspire to. Do not buy the horse that's going to give you crippling anxiety, or a fast track to bankruptcy when you combine his price, training bills and your hospital bills. Buy an older horse, that needs and deserves the relationship you can offer. Buy the horse you need - not the potential you hope to be able to ride. You and horse will both be happier in the long run. I know the people who most need it will not take this advice. But it bears repeating anyhow.
Here is Digby out foxhunting at Opening Meet, at age 23.
