Spring came and I showed up at Greg's to volunteer Mondays and Saturdays. I did chores, rode Greg's horses a little and puttered about happily always with an eye on Regal, watching and observing the problem child.
He was mouthy and rude and generally unpleasant with most people and other horses. One of the barn regulars (a decent person and a very experienced horsewoman) referred to him as a 'meat horse' while we observed him attempting to bully other horses over a paddock fence. Something in this really stung me, as I never saw anything in Regal that indicated meanness or malice. I mostly saw confusion and hurt and the typical teenage stuff that 4 year-olds are going through amplified by the orphan syndrome.
Because Regal was a bit of a 'dangerous' horse, I wasn't advised to do much with him other than socialize over a stall door or paddock fence. At lunch I would sit by him and chat with him, when I was working in the barn I'd talk to him, play games (look, I'm over here in the stall beside you!) and generally try to connect a little. He was mouthy and rude still, but I was curious about him and I think he was curious about me too. When I called him to the fence outside he would come running - though in a way that wasn't exactly polite.
Around this time, he injured somebody else. Catherine, one of the New Stride directors, was attempting to groom him and do his feet and he hit her and cut her quite badly. Regal Spacific was making quite a few names for himself, none of them printable here of course.
I heard that it was decided that he would be given to a trainer on Vancouuver Island and hopefully she would have the time and patience to train him as a jumper. For a couple weeks, I made preparations each Saturday for Regal to be picked up on Sunday. Monday I would come to the barn and there he'd be, still waiting.
One day, Greg decided to move Regal over to the newer barn and put him out in a larger paddock there. It's about a 5 minute walk down the driveway at Greg's then around the corner at the road and down the long driveway to the newer barn but most things with Regal weren't quite as simple as they looked. To help with the trip, I led an older TB gelding as a chaperone and Greg took Regal. Regal was calmer with the company, but that's not saying much. He showed no respect for personal space and barged Greg around quite a lot while constantly swiping at him with his mouth or trying to chew on the lead, etc. When not engaged in those activities he was on his back legs with fronts blazing. Not exactly a calm walk, but not exactly atypical for a young TB who hadn't been out in public in a long time either.
At the newer barn, we turned Regal out alone in a large grass paddock. What I saw there gave me goosebumps - he moved like a dream. It was so magnificent to watch him blow and stretch and kick and run. For the first time since I'd known him, he looked truly alive.
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