Hello from a couple of my horses

That beautiful red horse is Gigondas, my feedlot rescued thoroughbred.  She never raced as she doesn't has a lip tattoo.  I suspect she was used as a broodmare and was culled, along with 15 other beautiful chestnuts, from a thoroughbred farm somewhere here in the west.  Anyway, at one point 16 chestnut thoroughbreds were ALL on a slaughter-bound feedlot up in WA state.  Their photos were posted online and I do believe most of them found homes.  I took her, along with Beauty, and arranged for them to be shipped down to Lancaster, where I was boarding them at the time.  They spent 6 months there, and then I found this WONDERFUL couple who have now boarded them for 6 years up in our local mountains.  They have a HUGE arena and I like to take each horse down there, lunge them, and desensitize them, and then let them loose to roll and self-exercise.  My gelding, Sunni (bottom 3 photos...) loves to run.  He has a beautiful, flowing trot.  He was a PMU baby (the "unwanted" byproduct) from a ranch in Michigan. ***PMU means pregnant mare urine.  Mares are kept basically locked up while pregnant and their urine is captured for use in premarin, for women needing hormone therapy.  Premarin = pregnant mare urine.  Their babies are the unwanted byproducts and most were sold to slaughter, since there were so many of them.  Some, however, were bought by rescues. Fortunately for him, and a trailer full of other horses, United Pegasus Foundation rescued them and brought them to their facility which they had in Hemet.  That ranch is now closed and they moved to Tehachipi.  I used to visit their Hemet ranch and unknowingly fed carrots there to Sunni and a bunch of yearlings.  He was my first horse.  I adopted him from UPF and a friend boarded him for 6 months down here in the desert.  I probably won't ever ride Sunni, although he trusts me completely.  Being a PMU baby, he was pulled from his mother, NEVER socialized, and still is fearful of many, many things.  He's just too unreliable.  It's not that he would ever purposely hurt me.  It's just that he lets his fear take over and he panics.  He's taken off several times now at the tie rack for my trainer and one time he got out of his corral while the owner was cleaning it, panicked, and ran through their barbed wire fence into a neighbor's ranch, and then stood there shaking.  Fortunately, his physical wounds weren't too bad...the vet came and said they were minor and we put cream on them for weeks, but mentally, THAT was a big step back for him.  We are just now getting him used to just standing at the tie rack (we don't tie him there) and hanging out with him.  Big ole Lucille is my riding horse.  She is an older mare, gaited, and NOTHING scares her!