I have happy news and shit news.  To end on a better note, I'll start with the shit news.

My doctor's visit on Tuesday didn't go well.  I am having to retake the medication, which fucks me up severely, so I asked Ox's owner if we could switch my normal Wednesday ride with Thursday.  So after riding Archie and Ox last night, I took an apple I had to Whiskey.  Thinking that I didn't have time to ride him, but I could still look him over and give him cuddles.  En route to his pasture, I saw a group of about five people walking away from it.  One of them looked vaguely familiar as his owner, so I verified and then introduced myself as the woman who's been riding him.

She introduced the people with her as his new owners.

I feel like this entire situation could have been handled better by his current owner, but there's nothing I can do about that now.  I gave his new owners my phone number and told them to call me if anything didn't work out, because I would take him immediately.  And then I proceeded to wish them a good night and give him his apple, with a side of sobbing into his mane.  And if I hadn't switched my ride days, I might never have known, might never have made that possible connection.

It was definitely a situation of counting my chickens before they hatched (I'm so southern sometimes, it hurts).  In my mind, he was already my horse.  I was thinking about having my farrier determine if he needed fronts, figuring out what his color would be (purple?), and sending him off for a month of dressage boot camp so someone better than me could install contact and straight.

They did seem like nice people and I'm sure he'll have a comfortable life.  It's just not a life with me.

But, in better news, my little herd had a revolt.  There have been too many horses on the property for too long.  This would be relatively okay if the horses didn't depend on a shared resource (grass), but they do and now there is no grass.  

Ox's owner reached out to the barn owner and asked if we could move to his brother's facility across the street, which is dormant when movie horses aren't here, for at least the summer.  We moved on Sunday and I swear to god that it felt like I was getting an apartment with my best friends.

There's a huge pasture with tall grass, a dressage court with a mirror, plenty of trails, and another field that we've turned into our jump pasture.  All of our stuff is squeezed into the tack room and it's really like we just bought our own farm.  And I really think Archie has put back some of the weight he lost.  I'm okay with him being a little thin because it's better for his joints, but I still don't like butt bones and ribs.

There's a little contention about how long we'll actually be staying, but any time is better than no time.  So far, we've enjoyed our little paradise.