making silk purses out of sow's ears

That's a very old expression (the google tells me it was already common in the 1500s) but it was recently put back on my radar in L. Williams' post discussing her horse shopping criteria.

The idea being: take something inferior or ugly and transform it into a thing of real value.

(Well. Actually the expression itself speaks to the difficulty or near impossibility of making said transformation a reality, but let's just put that inconvenient truth aside for now haha). 

i'm quite pleased with this as a 'before' pic!

L's application of this proverb to horse shopping, and ultimately horse training, really resonated with me. Especially as I have already been quite fond of amassing a collection of what will hopefully be "Before" shots of Mr. Charlie Murray.

That's not to say that Charlie is himself an inferior creature. Quite the opposite actually! Charlie has a lot of class represented in his pedigree, and has two full siblings who are graded stakes winners. He himself sold at auction for $100K as a yearling.

yup that's a race horse!

Tho his career earnings were ultimately less than what his connections had probably hoped for him, he was none the less estimated to be a worthy and valuable horse.

So. Again. Obviously I'm not trying to demean him, or claim that I'm starting with some awful, rough or unlikely raw material.

future elegant dressage horse?

But perhaps you still get my drift. Charlie was a race horse for many years. It's what he knows, it's how he goes. And it's going to take patience and dedication to reshape him into my preferred sport horse way of going (not least bc my own tools for reshaping him are decidedly amateur).

It's an exciting idea tho. An exciting vision. What will Charlie look like next spring? Or this time next year? Will he be a shrinking violet, slow to develop a new way of carrying and expressing himself? Or will he be one of those TBs for whom changes come quickly and easily?

Who knows!! Gotta stay tuned to find out I guess haha!!

In the meantime tho I'm getting my fix by checking out other horse transformation stories. Personal favorites include Elisa Wallace's mustang magic makeovers with Fledge (video 1 of the series here) and Hwin (video 1 here), Stacy Westfall's Jac series (play list here), and Doug Payne's video progression of Running Order.

Know of any other awesome transformation stories out there?