A horse new to you, is a new horse!

I had small children and a need to get the hell out of the house.  By some uncanny coincidence a phone call came from out of the blue just as I'd come to the realisation that for my sanity I needed to get back into riding, and it all happened virtually overnight.  The master of our hunt, that I hadn't ridden in for a hundred years, needed a rider for his second horse.  Chancery, a little nondescript bay, 3/4 TB, hogged mane and only young, was delivered to my parents farm.  She arrived with all of her tack and a stern warning not to let kids anywhere near her paddock.  She 'chases them, you see, with her ears flat back and her teeth bared, and she's not welcome at ours because of this'.

I made the daily thirty minute drive from the city to the farm to ride along the quiet country roads of my childhood and through Totara Park.  My mother babysat my two small children that I would never allow near Chancery.  That was the plan.  But on one occasion, after a fabulous ride through the park, the sun shining from a clear blue sky, I drank iced tea in the garden with my mother.  My 2 y/o daughter was still asleep my mother said.  But in fact she had climbed out of her cot, dragged a child's chair to the post and rail fence, climbed between the rails and she was wrapped around Chancery's near front leg chortling to her.  Chancery was snuffling gently through my tiny daughter's hair.  My first significant 'Chancery' lesson proved invaluable.

While I would never ever ignore or take lightly a previous owner's advice or experience with a horse, I did learn then that I should take horses as I find them rather than allow them to wear a bad reputation forever.  This is also how I treat people.