That didn't go as planned...

Well, Beauty is finally moved in to her new home, and things are starting to settle down, after 36 hours of chaos.

First, she was supposed to arrive yesterday evening between 7-10pm. I had been anxiously checking my phone all day, anticipating a call, worrying about my horse, and finally gave the shipper a call around 8pm, just trying to get an idea of when he might be coming. He said there had been a delay with picking up another horse, who was a colt who had to be caught and had never seen a trailer, which took a whopping 4 hours. So, set back four hours, the ETA was now midnight. Okay, not the best time, especially since I had class in the morning, but fine.

Well, around midnight, I had not received a call and was beginning to worry. I called again, and the shipper said there had been a delay getting the troublesome colt off the trailer, and he was taking a nap because he was 5 hours over the driving time limit and was (understandably!) tired. He said he could get there around 3am if he pushed it, or he could come in the morning, around 6. I chose 6am, so I could be there and still get to my classes.

So I diligently get up after 4 hours of sleep and drive to the barn. When I got there, the shipper called to say he was 20 minutes away. Ugh, more delays, but not bad. So I waited and made friends with these cuties:

They wanted to explore every inch of my car!

On the sunroof!

Finally, the trailer arrived and Beauty unloaded fine, not looking any worse the wear despite spending 19+ hours on a trailer (from what was supposed to be a 10 hr trip). I put her in her paddock, unloaded her hay and my trunk, made sure she was eating and drinking and was relatively calm, and had to book it back to school to make my first class.

"But mom, there are friends over there!!!!!"

Exploring the run-in

Good pony relaxes and eats her hay

I came back after my classes were done, around 1, and she was doing fine - she'd sucked down a bunch of water, eaten hay, and the barn manager said she'd been doing fine. I took her out for a walk around the property to stretch dem legs and get her used to her surroundings. She was pushy and excited, but fine. We bopped around for a while and I put her back. Well, the calm ended when another boarder came to ride her horse, and then that horse's pasturemate started calling for it, and Beauty heard that and saw the other horse and went into "ZOMG IM ALL ALONE GONNA DIE" mode (she is in a quarantine pen for a week). She wasn't horrible, but she got kind of worked up. She'd be okay if I was there, but god forbid I went around the corner to try to organize my stuff for a minute... Eventually peace was restored (sort of) and I left.

But since my last few hours weren't stressful enough, my piece of shit car decided that something underneath was going to come loose and rattle around scarily. Like, really loud. I pulled into a conveniently placed Jiffy Lube, and despite that fact that they don't do repairs, they agreed to look and see if it was going to hold together until I got back to school. It wasn't. Apparently it isn't a big deal, the piece that was loose is just a heat shield, but the guy said if I hadn't stopped and they taken it off, I would have left it on the road. But it is safe to drive for a few days, so I will be calling a mechanic and getting it in within a few days. YAY CARS FALLING APART AT INCONVENIENT TIMES!

Argg, just glad that is over and hopefully things can settle down now!!