Due to some recent changes in her owner’s life, former SAFE horse Sasha is now looking for a new home. She is available as a SAFE-Assisted placement, which means that SAFE will be overseeing her adoption while she remains in the care of her current adopter, who has provided us with a wealth of wonderful information about this horse, as you will see below. Sasha has been given the very best care by her adopter over the past four years, and we are hopeful that we can find an equally great new home for this lovely mare.

Here is the information that was provided by Sasha’s current owner:

Sasha’s training and accomplishments:

• She was in training with Amber Luce.
• She is seat/leg trained and very responsive to light pressure.
• She was mainly being trained for Dressage, but was also ridden hunt seat and western.
• She goes W/T/C.
• She backs, turns on the forehand and haunches.
• She was learning to walk/trot laterally (half-pass).
• She is voice-trained on the lunge line and is also very sensitive to your body position, which tells her to stop, change gaits, or reverse (I am happy to demonstrate this if it doesn’t make sense).
• She is a great showmanship/halter horse.  Very easy to handle (trotting in hand, backing through cones, turning on her haunches, squaring up—all the usual stuff).
• Good with getting in/out of the trailer.
• Good for the farrier.
• Stands calmly in the cross-ties.
• I had my 10-yr old daughter taking lessons on her and riding her at the SAFE show in walk and walk/trot classes. When she’s being handled regularly she’s not so high-energy.
• She loves the show ring and any attention she gets with cameras and people.  She’s also great with other horses in the arena (in fact, it seems to give her confidence).
• She’s a very quick learner and extremely intelligent.

Things she will need work on:

• She’s getting better about baths, but I don’t cross-tie her while bathing because she has a tendency to back up and pull if she doesn’t like the water. She’ll usually just stand when I bathe her with a little bit of dancing.
• She requires being saddled slowly. She doesn’t like the girth tightened right away and she’ll dance in the cross-ties.  I’ve been working with her on this when we are done working—I unsaddle her and saddle her and she’s been good standing for that lately.
• She is still wary of the clippers. She’s fine if you clip her fetlocks on her back legs, but a little antsy when you try to do the front legs. You can clip her bridle path slowly and carefully—it just tickles so she gets a little shaky with her head. You can sort of clip her whiskers—she tries to eat the clippers or she dances because it’s ticklish. I haven’t been able to clip her ear hair, but I think it helps keep the flies out when they have ear hair anyway.
• Spray bottles are the devil. I haven’t had success curing her of this yet. There is hope as she used to be deathly afraid of velcro, but no issues with that.
• She is very dramatic and needs to have the extra time taken with putting her saddle, blanket, etc on. If you respect her, she’ll respect you.

• She had a suspensory injury on her right hind. When I took her to WSU two years ago, they did an MRI and said she wasn’t a candidate for surgery and suggested rest and gave her an injection to help her continue to stretch out her ligaments. She had extensive rehab with rest, Shockwave, IRAP, and PRP. She was kept off of turnout for the past two years (recently put back on turnout to help with her energy level). She was sound enough to be ridden after Shockwave/IRAP, and PRP and has been for the last couple of months—she just needs light riding or she becomes sore.  Light riding would be mainly walk/trot 4–5 days a week. She can canter, but it’s hard for her. The vet said she could be ridden 5+ days a week and do W/T/C with monthly injections, but I can’t afford to do that with her.
• She’s UTD on shots, teeth, and worming.
• She’s never needed shoes, just a trim with the farrier at the usual interval of 6–8 weeks.

Recent injury:

The recent injury occurred on January 6th while she was being ridden bareback in the arena. There were about three other horses in the arena as well and all of them (including Sasha) were a bit antsy. Her rider says she was probably feeding off their energy and got a little excited and reared up and lost her footing and fell backward. She suffered a hematoma on the left-side next to her vulva and some cuts around her anus. She ended up going up to Pilchuck for a week because of the swelling on the hematoma as she wasn’t able to pass stool and was in danger of colic. They kept her quiet and fed her liquids and enemas to help her pass. When she returned to my barn a week later, she was on a special diet of wet hay and medicine and could be hand-walked. NW Equine came out about 2–3 weeks after she was back from Pilchuck and removed the blood clots from her hematoma and put in a drain. The drain came out about 3 days later and she healed right up. She is completely healed from that incident and she was cleared mid-February to have turnout and begin work again.  Work has consisted of lunging and then I get on her and walk her out. Last week, I have started to do some trot while on her as well as some other work that keeps her engaged (ie turning on the haunches and forehand and backing). She’s been relaxed and easy-going.

Misc:

• She’s registered with the AHA (643581). She’s straight Egyptian and  we’re told the last daughter of Snowlion RSI before he passed away.