I perhaps should have been a little more concerned than I actually was about having not discussed with my husband, my impulsive and completely irrational decision to purchase a young, only just broken pony, sight unseen, with no rider, no vet check and no way of transport from the depths of Gisborne. The trip would be 600 kilometres plus, door to door. Instead of consulting my husband, I phoned a horse transporting company and could not believe that by some incredible against all odds coincidence, one of the drivers was about to leave Gisborne with an empty float used to deliver the last load of goods and chattels following a marriage break up. He would be on the road to Auckland where our farm is, the very next morning. The wait for transport could have been months. 
Next call was to a vet in Gisborne who happened to be at that very moment visiting another horse close to where Lightning was, more than an hour from his surgery. He agreed to check Lightning for any obvious defects, give him a tetanus shot and worm him. The stars were aligning. While Jim, the man I purchased Lightning from waited for the vet and contemplated his need to immediately after the check, deliver the pony to the racecourse in Gisborne, to overnight in a stable there, he happily obliged me by taking photos from every which way possible of all four legs and feet etc. The photo here is of Lightning, feet up on blocks being methodically scrutinized and photographed by Jim, who turned out to be a very honest and decent man to deal with.
I waited anxiously for the vet to call and when he did, I almost cried with relief. I mean, really, this time I was certain I’d gotten my compulsive horse shopping, horribly wrong.
“If I’d know this pony was for sale, I’d have bought him myself,” the vet said. “I was hunting last weekend and Jim was there on Lightning. I’ve never seen anything jump so well. It was the pony's first hunt. And he’s only two,” he added.
I quickly established that there were no obvious signs of stress or anything untoward due to this pony being pretty well rattled and rolled at such a young age and the vet said he was positive all was fine. So Lightning was duly delivered to a stable at the racecourse, two hours from where he’d lived almost all of his life. To this day, I'm not certain that delivery was not made in the rather dilapidated float shown in background of the photo in Part One of Lightning's story. It was a factor I could not bear to think of. In any event, the first leg of Lightning's journey had begun. 

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