Horsing Around in Journal

Rode my boy yesterday - not the OTTB I’m working but MY BOY. lol. I love him so much.
Horses are amazing. Yeah, it all sounds so romantic, I’m sure, to someone who’s never experienced the complete freedom, the total connection, the absolutely attunement that a rider has with their horse. But when I ride, I cannot help but revert to the poetic language of DeKunffy, or Podhajsky.
And, every horse is different.
Every horse offers a unique combination of personality and physical ability. I sort of lucked out -literally- in finding my perfect horse. I didn’t even think there was such a thing, as a perfect horse for each rider. I’ve ridden, shown, trained, managed, upwards of 3 dozen horses at the time I found Cloud. And when I found him, I was looking for a horse for my mom. lol
My mom loves draft horses. I know she’s fond of them, but I also know they eat 2 bales a day… so I was in the market for a hefty stock breed or a half draft, at the very most. I visited all kinds of places, including placement and rescue operations (for the record, NOT a fan of most). I went to one and they wanted to show me a waif of an OTTB; thinking tall is big. Haha. No, sorry, I told them. Not looking for just tall.
That was when I saw him. He was in the same paddock as the OTTB; he sprinted to the gate to be first- he was obviously spoiled and his size allowed him to easily shoulder the others out of his way. And he was BIG. A dinner plate footed, feathered, mess of mane and tail flying, linebacker of a horse. And I said, what about him???
Ah, they told me, noticing my total fascination. Someone’s picking Cloud up tomorrow.
bummer
Miraculously, the next week they called me to tell me the deal with Cloud fell through. Was I interested?

In all honesty, and many people have told me this after watching me work with him, I’m not sure that anyone else could have trained this horse.
He was very big, and at the time, an unbroken 5 year old… He was dangerously pushy, flighty, spoiled, lacked all manners and had no idea where he was in the world. A total mess. To boot, he has zero attention span (even to this day), is VERY reactive (a challenge with such a large horse), and is only mentally capable of working for about 20 minutes.
A bit of a challenge, to say the least.

Yet, I have no doubt he’s my perfect horse. He’ll do anything for me. He’s got a very weird, but accurate, sense of justice, and certain people piss him right off. He’s a gorgeous mover; he tries his heart out for me, and he is decently athletic. Innate gaits around 8’s, consistently earns high scores from judges, much to everyone’s surprise (he simply doesn’t look like he could move, lol). He loves to get out and work. I feel like he’s just a one in a million horse that I can really bring out the very best in.