Why Karma?

I never really talked about what exactly I was looking for in a horse when I was shopping. I just said SURPRISE GUYS I GOT A PONY!!!!!!!! Yes I am adult, why do you ask? Anyway, I decided to try and apply the lessons I learned from Stinker and not make the same mistakes.

Fun but not well put together

I will never regret getting Stinker, I love that horse dearly and he has taught me so much. But on the flip side he has some weak points. First up, I wanted a horse that was well put together. Stinker was never great, but the EPM took a toll on his body that he just couldn't recover from. Secondly, I wanted a less sensitive horse. If I were a better rider it wouldn't be such a deal breaker, but any little change in the rider's body resulted in a change from him. Sometimes it was great, a lot of the time it was activating giraffe mode.

I always forget how awful he looked when we started the EPM treatment

My list looked something like:
1) Sensible
2) Good conformation
3) Smaller (I just don't like massive horses)
4) Fun

I like the way she is put together

My goals were to find a horse that seemed like it could make a good all-round horse but also be decent at dressage. Think Karen's Hampton, but smaller because Porkchop is massive. My budget had me mostly looking at younger horses. I thought about a couple warmblood babies, but I kept coming back to most warmbloods are bred to be bigger than what I want. Sure there is a chance that they won't get that big, but I didn't find anything I wanted enough to risk it.

Stolen shamelessly from the internet

Karma appealed to me because Cardi baby + her dam has good dressage lines + I liked her personality from the video. They were chasing and rattling stuff at her so she kind of looked like a pogo pony at the canter, but I decided it was worth the risk to go see her. Basically I thought I wanted her, but didn't dare show her video to my trainer because I knew the canter would result in an immediate veto.

When Aimee and I arrived *ahem* at 7 am to look at her (I am an idiot and screwed up my scheduling and I had to be home by 10 am the next day and it was a 14 hour drive) poor Karma was a little out of sorts. It was supposed to be breakfast time not having strangers mess with her time.

These moves were not observed (I will never get tired of this picture)

Her breeder was a little mortified by her behavior, but really I didn't think much of it. Karma was a little head tossy and you could see that she didn't really want to play, but she did anyway. I was fiddling with her and discovered that she didn't lead from the right side. So to test her thought process I pushed a few buttons to see if she would say no or figure out what I wanted. It took her about 30 seconds to figure out what I wanted with no escalation. You could watch her process and go ok weird but sure.

How can you resist this little weirdo???

I totally fell in love with her that day. The timing of everything was less than ideal, but I knew she was what I wanted. I am sure we will have our ups and downs, but I am excited for the future and can't wait to see how she develops (and please please please grow Karma).