(Part 1)

November 2001

Duchess, Jourdan and Tarlton arrived approximately 7 weeks after they were handpicked from one of DoC's agents. These Kaimanawas were from the end of June roundup.

Duchess Jourdan Karl

We were rather annoyed at the long wait and mucking around as two were young colts and we had already lost one lot of grazing. When they finally arrived in the dark and after being on a truck for a considerable amount of time, the wait seemed to have been worth it. Luckily we had the use of a loading race and lights, plus they were able to be unloaded onto a concrete area. We were alarmed at the weight they had lost since we had first seen them. After the three were unloaded something did not seem quite right about them. I jokingly asked the handler if they had been sedated. We managed to get them to nearby pens, once in we asked the handler to take the old tatty halters off, so we could put ours on. He refused to do this. Hmm, as they were supposed to have been handled we wondered why. Over the next couple of days we were to realise the difficulty of even trying to put a halter on them, let alone worming and licing them. They were frightened and nervous. (We had noticed on arrival that Duchess was extremely head shy).

Somehow Duchess managed to get herself stuck in a sheep race and as it was blocked off on one end I blocked the other end and thought it is now or never to worm her. I was able to take off the old halter and put her new one on, next was the worming, taking a deep breath I finally achieved this; not without incident though, she lunged for me. Thankfully she did not find her target and thankfully she could not move her hind legs or this could have been disastrous. Funnily enough we were able to put the halter on J (Jourdan) and worm and lice him without incident. Out of the three of them he really seemed to crave attention.

Karl (Tarlton), well you could not get near him, so we put the wormer in some grass. Well that worked a treat.

As far as licing - that had to wait. After a week it was time for them to go into a paddock. We thought they would kick up their heels and hoon around, not so, they rather suspiciously walked into the paddock and well - just started eating. We thought we had made good progress over the week and even though we couldn't actually catch them, we spent a lot of time with them in the paddock until they slowly came to us. If we thought our problems were over, then we were just kidding ourselves. The real fun was about to begin. J decided "its time to act like a colt" and thought we would make a good target. Well there's only so much one can do, so into the picture comes Lee Somervell, well respected horse trainer.