Meet the Wizard
It’s a terribly empty feeling to have lost my first horse, my only horse. Now that Alibar is gone, I am realizing how much thought, time, and energy I put into him on a daily basis. I also am realizing how thoughtful and dedicated my barn community is. There is a beautiful pear tree planted in Alibar’s memory at the barn to greet all visitors, like Alibar used to do. And I’ve been given the opportunity to ride and work with a few horses at the barn. For now, I’ve chosen to spend most of my time with Wizard.
Wizard is a 12-year-old Thoroughbred gelding- he’s about 16 hands tall. He raced and has some western training, but has not spent a lot of time in English tack. Wizard is a nicely-built horse and he has wonderful ground manners, but he’s quite green. One of the reasons that I like to work with Wizard is because he is so dissimilar to Alibar. He is leggy where Alibar was more compact; he is bendy and flexible where Alibar was strong but less limber; he is a bay with minimal white where Alibar had a large blaze and four white feet; he is green where Alibar and I had a very high level of communication.
Stay tuned for my adventures with Wizard.
Rock and Racehorses: The Blog 
Your writing about Gettysburg and horses reminds me of horses in the Army.
My dad joined the calvary in 1929 at age 14- they did that back then.
He saw calvary on parade in Houston and said- Whoopie that is for me.
The reality was cleaning stalls, horses, carrying hay. They made him transfer to a quartermaster company because he was not big enough to do the saber drill over the horses head with saber or pistol, and quartermasters was in headquarters where they put the teenagers- the boy soldiers- to carry sides of beef from the rail cars to the cooks.
He still had his cavalry saddle when I was a child, ants ate the leather off over the years in the barn, a US Army issue saddle.
I do not know what breeds of horses did best in battles of the civil war, but the horses in 1929 until they were phases out, in Texas at least, were what we call nags, nondescript breed.
Looking at photos of the last great cavalry battles (Poncho Villa, Mexico) the horses look like the Texas nondescript horses.
Your magnificent horse you plan on taking to a Chiropractor is light years outside the box of what most calvary troops rode.
What made a great calvary mount?
I am sure the topic was an ongoing debate back in the day of calvary.