Donut Takes a Nap...A Lot!

After I got Donut, one of the most frequent things I heard when I got out to the barn was, "Hey, I thought Donut was dead today, but I guess she was just sleeping?  She seemed to be sleeping for a long time, though.  Is that normal?"  My response was always, "Yes, remember that she is a young horse and young animals, just like young humans, need lots of sleep."  Nimo slept a lot too when I first got him.  I can't say for sure what is generally normal for yearlings in terms of sleep, but my experience has definitely been that they enjoy having a daily nap.

I didn't have the privilege of seeing Donut take her daily naps for a few weeks, but I did finally get a picture of it.

Over time, it became clear that she really took her naps seriously!

And her snoring became the stuff of legend.  Watch this video with the sound on to hear how loud it is!

I am interested to see if her napping habit continues as she gets older, and whether she will develop a preference for sleeping in her stall or outside.

Does your horse take a lot of naps?

Week 4 of December

It was a week.  I wish I could say that I made it all the way to Christmas without having a meltdown, but alas, circumstances conspired against me, and on the afternoon of December 23, it is possible that I had a little bit of a moment when I was out at the barn.

To understand how I got to that point, I'll have to walk you through my week.  Monday was actually OK.  I didn't accomplish as much as I probably should have, but I admit that I needed a break after the weekend.  I did get some last minute Christmas shopping done, and Gemma and I delivered a couple of presents to important people (namely the barn owner and Gemma's riding instructor).  That was definitely a lot of fun, and I was feeling pretty good about my week by the end of Monday.

On Tuesday, the day started like any normal day, except for the part where I had to glue a reindeer back together.  We suspect it was an incident with Hawkeye, one of our cats who is constantly messing with stuff.  All I had was jewelry-making glue, but it seems to have done the trick and the reindeer is back in service with most of him back together.

The reindeer's right ear and right front leg took the brunt of the damage.

Gemma gave the reindeer an important job of guarding a particularly important present!

It was about 11:30 when I got a call from my barn owner.  After assuring me that her call was not about Donut, she asked if I possibly had time to haul one of the other horses to an equine hospital because he needed to go immediately.  To be honest, I didn't really even think before responding.  Of course I would take the horse.  The owner didn't have a trailer and it was an emergency.  So I emailed my boss to let her know I'd be taking leave for the rest of my day, made sure Gemma had something to eat, and found something for her to bring with us to eat later in the day.

We got to the barn as fast as we could, and I hooked up my trailer.  I hadn't used it in several months, since bringing Donut home, so I double-checked to make sure the tires weren't flat and the lights worked.  Everything looked good, so I pulled up to the barn as close as I could so the horse wouldn't have to walk far.  I actually wasn't sure what was wrong with him, so I checked in with the vet.  I thought she said he had reflux, and I spent a good part of my afternoon trying to figure out how a horse could have some kind of reflux.  In reality, she'd said, "deflux," which is apparently the procedure used on horses with impaction colic to see if the impaction can be broken up or dislodged using a nasal gastric tube.  (I think - I got my information from another boarder who had been there when the vet was treating the horse.)

Anyway, the horse loaded like a pro onto my trailer, even though I'm pretty sure it had been 10 years since the last time he had seen a trailer.  He also hauled quietly, although it was easy to tell he was in distress.

I had assumed I'd be taking him to one of two equine hospitals that are the closest to the barn.  One is about 30 minutes away and the other, which is the one I took Nimo to, is about an hour away.  Instead, I found out I'd be taking him to a hospital that I had only heard about, but never been to.  I asked the vet how long it would take to get there, and she assured me it was about an hour.  She also gave me printed directions and told me that I needed to use those because my GPS would not give me good directions.  She also assured me that there was no way I could miss the turnoff from the main highway because there were a lot of signs for that particular road.  (I assure you, if there is even a remote possibility that a person could miss a turn, I am perfectly capable of it.  I just had a bumper sticker printed that says, "I don't always go the extra mile, but when I do, it's because I missed my exit.")

We got on the road and I tried to intermittently review the directions as I drove.  I was familiar with the highway I was on, but not quite sure how many miles down the highway I would have to go before seeing the turn.  As we drove, I became increasingly concerned about where that turn was and if I had already missed it, because I could see that our hour time frame was rapidly dwindling.  The same could be said of the amount of gas in my truck's tank.  It was a really windy day, and it felt like we were driving straight into gusts of 40 mph.  I was lucky to break 8 mpg, according to my gas mileage gauge, and I spent a lot of time hovering around 5 mpg.  So I decided to stop for gas just to take one worry off my mind.  Plus I could check on the horse, who was in the same condition as when we'd left.

I also took the opportunity to start my GPS.  Even if the directions weren't quite right, I figured I could get a decent estimate of time and make sure I kept my bearings.  Yeah, so the first thing that became clear is that the one hour time estimate was a complete fabrication.  I was going to be lucky to make it in an hour and 45 minutes.  I knew the vet at the barn had let the equine hospital know when I'd left the barn, and they would be expecting us in about an hour.  She'd asked that if I knew I was going to be later than that due to bad traffic or some other reason that I call the hospital and let them know.  So when I thought I was about a half hour out, I called the hospital.  The lady I talked to made sure I understood not to use my GPS directions and to use the printed ones, because the GPS would take me longer than I needed to go on the main highway.  That was good to know.  I figured that way if I missed the turn from the printed directions, I could still follow my GPS directions and get there without having to try to turn around.  (Seriously, do not listen to people when they try to give you directions.  They are just wrong.  Use a map.)

So we drove and we drove and we drove, looking for the name of the road we needed to turn on.  I put Gemma on duty to search for the road sign too, just in case I missed it.  With both of us looking, we never found it.  Finally, I was at the point where my GPS told me I needed to turn.  Figuring that I had somehow missed the turn despite my best efforts, I followed my GPS directions.  Which took me on some pretty crazy backroads (all paved, thank goodness!) which were narrow with hairpin turns and one-lane bridges, plus the steepest incline at an intersection that I think I have ever pulled a trailer through.  We were in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains and pretty much all the roads were called "Something Mountain Road."  Those names were not for decoration.

I have had this experience more than once.  Virginia has lots of what appear to be rundown, crappy roads that actually go to legitimate towns.  My daughter had not, so she was clearly worried that we were in trouble.  I tried to assure her this was par for the course, but she still thought I was crazy.  Finally, my GPS directions lined up with the printed directions and we made it to the hospital.  The vet and a technician immediately came out to greet us, and I unloaded the horse without incident and handed him over.  I checked in with the front desk and then texted the barn owner to let her know I'd arrived before heading back to the barn.

For the drive back, I planned to try to follow the printed directions, so I could see where I went wrong, in case I ever had to come out to this hospital again.  That was an exercise in futility.  There was one intersection where about 17 roads all convened and while there was a road sign, everything was at such a crazy angle, I couldn't make heads or tails of anything.  So I decided to follow my instincts.  Normally, that would be a bad idea when it comes to anything related to geographic location because I really have no idea where I am half the time, even when I have perfectly good directions.  But I've been driving around the bowels of Virginia for quite a few years now, and I think I'm actually starting to get a feel for it. 

My instincts turned out to be correct, and we made it back to the main highway quickly and without all the crazy mountain roads.  I also discovered that my GPS had actually given me directions to turn BEFORE the printed directions did.  So I hadn't missed the turn after all.  (It was good to know that I wasn't blind, but it still sucked for the poor horse who had to ride through several miles of crazy roads.)  Basically, the printed directions were probably a longer distance but they avoided the mountain roads.  Good to know for the future, but I probably hadn't lost much time following the GPS directions.  It took us about an hour and a half to get back to the barn, and some of the time savings was due to me driving a little faster (I tend to drive a little slower when I have a horse in the trailer, especially one who is not in good shape), not stopping for gas, and just knowing where I was going.

When I had first agreed to haul the horse, I hadn't expected that it would take so long, and now Gemma and I were really pressed for time.  I have come to hate Tuesdays and Thursdays because Gemma has climbing team practice at 5:30 and getting through the stuff we need to do out at the barn in enough time so we can get home by 5 is always a bit stressful.  Normally, we take at least an hour and a half.  Now, we had less than 45 minutes.  Thankfully, the staff working that day were a little ahead of schedule, which helped, and we were able to quickly get the things done that we needed to do.  But we were still about 10 minutes late getting home.  And I still needed to get to the grocery store to get food for Christmas.  And I hadn't had any lunch, so I was really hungry.

My husband brought me some food and after I ate, I headed to the grocery store.  Which was actually not bad.  Everything I wanted was in stock, and there weren't very many customers.  So I was able to get checked out quickly and get home.  I definitely went to bed early that night.

I did learn a few things from the whole experience, though.  First, if you agree to haul a horse for someone, make sure you know exactly where you need to go and how long it is going to take to get there.  Second, make sure you know exactly what is wrong with the horse before you haul him.  Third, insist that you have direct communication with the owner of the horse to talk about the horse's history of being hauled, how he loads, how he hauls, and who will cover damage to your trailer if the horse causes an issue.  In this case, I never got to talk to the owner.  For some reason, she wasn't at the barn, and I never heard from her at all.  I felt a little too on-my-own for hauling someone else's horse.

Which brings me to a point that I would like to make for anyone who needs someone else to haul their horse in the event of an emergency.  If you are the horse owner, please make sure that you thank the person who took your horse.  The sooner the better.  It would also be nice if you would offer to pay for gas, especially when the person hauling your horse is spending hours on the road.  The person may not want the gas money, but it is nice to offer, especially because what you would have paid if you had had to get a commercial hauler for an emergency haul would be pretty significant, and it probably would take longer too.  It's been four days since I hauled that horse, and I haven't gotten even the briefest of text messages thanking me.  It is possible that it is simply an oversight because of the stress of the situation and Christmas.  But I have to say that I'm not excited to do that kind of trip again if the person is not going to be at least minimally appreciative.  (And in this case, the quick timing resulted in a good outcome.  The horse did not need surgery and is already back at the barn, on the way to a full recovery.)

Also, don't ask the barn owner to go find transportation for your horse.  If you board and you don't have a trailer, you need to have a plan for how your horse will be transported in an emergency.  There are some barns where the owner/manager may have their own rig and can move your horse, but even then, I wouldn't count on it.  Trucks and trailers can break down or they might be in use for another purpose during your emergency.  

It's really great if you can ask the person yourself.  This was actually the second time in four days that the barn owner had contacted me to haul another boarder's horse in an emergency.  The first time had occurred on Saturday night.  The owner had texted me and I didn't get the message right away because I was baking.  

I made these little pumpkin pie pockets and they were delicious!  And yes, I absolutely ate them for breakfast.  Like I said, it's been a week.

 

I saw it after I had showered and was getting into bed for the night at 10 pm.  I still texted her back and asked if the owner still needed someone.  Fortunately, she had gotten a commercial hauler by then, but I would absolutely have gotten out of bed and hauled that horse that night.  Even though the horse is a known bad hauler.  But the owner in this case had procrastinated for three days about taking the horse to the hospital, even though the vet had specifically said that the horse needed to be euthanized or taken to the hospital because of the seriousness of his condition the first time he came out.  Instead, the horse languished in incredible pain for all of us to watch for three days while he got zero supportive care.  And then the owner decided to move the horse late on a Saturday night.  That is really not good decision-making, and the only reason I would have done it is for the horse, whom I simply could not stand to see be in pain for one more day.  (He is also back after a four-day stint in the hospital.  But this particular horse has an assortment of chronic, degenerative problems, and fixing this particular problem will not improve his overall quality of life.  He should have been euthanized, and it is heart-breaking to watch this situation play out.  Part of being a horse owner is having the courage to make end-of-life decisions that are in the best interest of your horse, not in the best interest of you being able to post on Facebook about how you are doing everything you can to save a horse's life.  You aren't saving him.  You are condemning him to years of suffering.)

After all the excitement and activity on Tuesday, I was ready for a slower-paced Wednesday.  I still had vague hopes of being able to make cookies with my daughter and getting some last minute cleaning of the dining room done, so we could eat at the table for Christmas Eve.  And the day started out just fine.  until I realized the washing machine was broken.  I did some trouble-shooting and then gave it up and called my husband at work to delegate that particular problem to him.  In the meantime, though, I had sopping wet clothes in the washing machine that were not going to wash themselves and another load for my daughter that really needed to be done.

Luckily, I had a set-up for handwashing clothes, or rather, a raw sheep fleece.  Earlier this year, I had gotten it into my head that I wanted to learn how to process a sheep fleece from its raw, unwashed state fresh off the sheep to a finished woven project.  I learned, of course, that there was a bit of a learning curve, and I hadn't gotten that far into my project.  But I had created a set up for handwashing, rinsing, and spinning the fleece dry (not spinning the fleece into yarn - that is a whole other process that is currently evading me).  So I got my bucket set up for soaking the clothes in soapy water, the sink set up for rinsing, and my spinning machine set up for spinning.  (The spinner is a great invention and it really spins anything almost dry in about a minute due to the impressive spins per second that it does.)

It took me about three hours to do those two "loads" of clothes, which is honestly about the same amount of time it would have taken me if I had used the washing machine.  Of course, I had to do a lot of work, but the result was still the same - clean clothes.  

Then it was time to go out to the barn, and I was envisioning a nice time with no time constraints on getting Gemma back home.  So when I got there and discovered I wouldn't have that, I was kind of upset.  What happened is that I found out that one of the boarders who had tested positive for COVID and had some bad symptoms was going to be at the barn.  She owned the horse that had to go to the hospital on Saturday night, and she was planning on meeting the horse at the barn at 4:30 when the hauler brought him back.  I know that the CDC has stated that people who have had COVID symptoms for at least 10 days and have been clear of those symptoms for at least three days are cleared to return to public interactions.  In this case, I knew that wasn't possible.  I had personally heard this lady on the phone on Saturday afternoon while one of the staff tried to once again convey how much pain her horse was in.  She did not sound good at all.  The chances that she had miraculously felt better in one day and been symptom free for the past three days was just not possible.  So she was bringing her infectious self out to the barn anyway, and I had no intention of exposing either myself or my daughter to her presence.  (She didn't even bother to wear a mask or social distance from other people.  It was mind-bogging that she had been quarantining herself for quite a while and had admitted that the illness was pretty intense and was still so willing to expose other people to her sickness.  And the next day, another boarder who is more confrontational than I am confirmed that she is still not symptom free.  I can't even...Especially because I would say almost 100% of the other boarders have been really limiting our time going other places outside of the barn to just essential activities or the occasional lower risk social situation since the end of March.  It is our one "safe place," and it was destroyed in a minute.)

I rushed my daughter through our chores with our horses.  We had half an hour.  So once again, I got no time to spend with Donut.  (I haven't blogged about this particular problem yet, but I am having the worst time being able to find a consistent schedule.  Between life interruptions and other obligations, I'm really struggling to get quality time with Donut, and it is making me quite aggravated.)

And this is the point I had my meltdown.  Between hauling the horse on Tuesday, having the washing machine break down and handwashing clothes instead of doing the things I'd expected to be able to do, finding out that a COVID positive person was going to be out at the barn and take away the only possibility I had to enjoy my day with my horse, worrying about the package that still hadn't arrived with my daughter's present from Santa - the latest tracking information showed that it had been held for ELEVEN days in one location before moving and it was going to be a crapshoot in terms of whether it would make it on time, and finding out that Mini's owner had just been there and not taken care of her was too much.  

You may remember that I've been leasing a pony named Mini for my daughter.  We are losing the lease on the pony at the end of the month because the pony's owner wants to move her to a new facility.  On the one hand, it makes sense.  The pony's owner had moved her other horse to a new facility several months ago for competition reasons and she's been having a really hard time getting to both barns.  So Gemma and I have been taking care of Mini pretty much full-time, even though we only have a lease for two days a week.  The reason the pony needs so much care is because she has heaves (the equine equivalent of asthma), something that was not disclosed when we started the lease.  It has been a pretty significant problem the whole time we've been leasing because the owner refuses to employ even a single daily management strategy to help the pony breathe better.  Instead she is reactive and wants to give the pony medicine only if she is having a flare-up, which she does every 5-8 days now.  That is not good.  With that kind of management, the pony's life is in danger.  I know this because I managed my own horse with heaves for 15 years.

On the other hand, moving the pony to a new facility means that I'm not sure anyone will be really managing her care.  The owner has shown no inclination to do it.  I think she expects the barn staff to be more involved, but honestly, that is an unrealistic expectation.  I have learned that very few people can recognize when Mini is having a flare up, so she gets overlooked unless I check her breathing every day.  Which I do.  And that day, the pony's owner had been out at the barn.  The pony had been in an empty stall because the lady working at the barn that day is very good and she brought Mini in, anticipating that Gemma and I would be out to check on her, and wanting to save us a walk in the increasingly muddy field (Virginia in the winter is unpleasantly muddy).  It was really nice of her, and it meant that Mini's owner only had to walk a few steps to look at her. And she didn't even bother to check her breathing.  So when I checked it, I discovered she was wheezing and texted the owner.  She agreed that I could give Mini medication after I negotiated with her a bit.

And that was when I lost it.  And a bunch of unpleasant things came out of my mouth about the pony's owner.  Mini is an exceptional pony.  Her temperament is second to none.  She carts the owner's four year old child around at shows on demand, even though that child almost never comes out to ride in between shows or invests a single minute in that pony's care.  In fact, the owner took Mini to an overnight, two-day show while she was in the middle of a flare-up and administered what I'm pretty sure are prohibited substances so her daughter could wander around in a lead line class.  It is unconscionable that the owner was at the barn and couldn't be bothered to take two minutes to check on Mini's well-being and give her medication to help her breathe better.

I'm just so tired of seeing all the horses (and other animals) being treated as if they are dinner plates.  Kept in a stall without regard for their well-being unless they are needed for service.  Kept alive in pain so the owner can claim the dubious virtue of "doing everything they can" to keep it alive, as if horses think about life and death the same way humans do.  And I was scared for Mini.  She deserves the best life and the best drugs and the best comfort she can be given for as long as it can be given and then she deserves a pain-free death when those conditions can't be met anymore.  And I'm 95% certain that will not happen.  It was tough to think about so close to Christmas.

So going into Christmas, I was not in the best mindset.  But horses aside, the other stuff worked out.  Gemma's present from Santa arrived at about noon on Christmas Eve.  I got the house clean enough for us to have a nice celebration.  All the food I made turned out and we had a fun informal dinner on Christmas Eve with a friend of mine who is single and would normally travel to see her family over Christmas.  (I definitely try to be mindful of the risk of COVID, but after a co-worker's teenage son tried to kill himself a few weeks ago as a direct result of the stresses brought on by COVID, the collateral damage on people's mental states is something I'm trying to be more aware of.  My friend is an extreme extrovert and all the isolation has been hard on her.  There was no way I was letting her spend Christmas all by herself.)  Gemma always requests my tuna casserole on Christmas Eve because it is her favorite.  Then we opened a few presents and watched How the Grinch Stole Christmas before heading to bed.

The presents are all wrapped and ready for Christmas!

 

I managed to play Santa once again without Gemma suspecting, and on Christmas morning, she was delighted to find a rainbow headstall and rainbow reins plus a pair of purple Hands-On gloves in her size from Santa.  (Isn't Santa amazing to have found such a colorful bridle and who knew you get the Hands-On gloves in purple? ha, ha!)

The bridle is already hanging in my tack locker at the barn.  Gemma was insistent that it be ready to go at a moment's notice!

We opened our presents at a leisurely pace on Christmas morning, and I started cooking for a midday meal at about 9 am.  I made the traditional ham, green bean casserole, mashed potatoes, pasta salad, dinner rolls, and pumpkin pie.  

We also enjoyed a little "white Christmas" when it started snowing on and off throughout the morning and early afternoon.  We only got a dusting, but it was a pretty snow and it definitely made it feel like Christmas.

The view from our backyard deck

 

After resting for a bit after our big meal, Gemma and I headed out to the barn to hang out with the horses.  It was cold and windy.  A cold front was blowing through, which was causing temperatures to fall from the previous day's high of  65 degrees to 19 degrees overnight.  Gemma still went on a short ride on Mini, and I finally got some time to spend with Donut.  She was even reasonably clean on her top half, so I got her cleaned up as best as I could and tried to convince her to pose for Christmas pictures by the tree.  Gemma managed to get one shot that wasn't too bad.  The barn aisle is dirty and I am wearing my typical footwear for slogging through mud, but at least Donut was not too fussed about having to wear the antlers:)

And then Gemma and I headed back home for some leftovers and a viewing of Christmas Vacation.  (Which is absolutely not an appropriate movie for an 8-year-old, I discovered.  Gemma was completely traumatized by the scene where the cat is electrocuted by the Christmas lights, and she has banned us from watching it in her presence again! - lol!)

So Christmas is over now.  I survived it in much better form than in the past, and I think I am finally learning how to manage my time during the month (surprise emergency hauling and washing machine breakdowns notwithstanding).  But I was sad about exactly how many things I had to give up to keep my mental stability.  We didn't make gingerbread cookies or a gingerbread house, which we had planned (although we might still do them anyway next week).  I didn't get a chance to make homemade gifts for all the people I wanted to make gifts for (although I may do them next month and they will just be very late).  We didn't watch a bunch of Christmas movies and read Christmas books like I had imagined.

I now understand why so many people take a lot of time off of work in December, and I'm thinking that I might need to do that too.  I haven't in the past (except for one year when I did take the first week off in December, but I felt so guilty I haven't done that again), but my commitment to my job has really waned during the past couple of years.  It isn't that I don't still try to do a good job.  I do.  But I have stopped caring about the outcomes as much.  There really isn't any way to fight against the machine that is Federal bureaucracy and for now, there are too many factors outside my control.  Maybe things will change in time, but they never have in the last 20 years, so it is folly for me to keep thinking that they might improve.  I am working on making my peace with that, and maybe next year, I will be able to take a lot of time off in December with a clear conscience and work on incorporating some of the things I missed this year.

That said, I hope all of you had a wonderful Christmas!

I rode Donut's mom!!!

I've spent the last 14 years riding Nimo.  During that time, I only rode one other horse a few times, and she was a horse I was quite familiar with because I'd ridden her regularly for a couple of years while Nimo was growing up.  But over time, I really started to believe that my riding skills had become quite specialized to Nimo and that riding another horse would feel weird and that I would have to spend many years learning how to ride all over again.  (Somehow I also simultaneously believed that because Nimo was such a challenge to ride, riding just about any other horse would be easy.  It wasn't that I thought I would be able to get on any horse and get the horse to perform miracles, but I figured I could walk, trot, canter, and go in a circle without too much trouble.)  

Because of the effort I'd had to go through to ride Nimo, I have always been in awe of the riders I know or read about that catch ride endurance horses.  I mean, it is one thing to get on a horse you have never met before or only ridden a couple of times and do an arena workout for 30-45 minutes, but to go out on trails that are potentially challenging or even dangerous on a horse that you haven't had a chance to build a relationship with sort of seemed suicidal to me.  And yet, I saw it happening all the time, typically with positive experiences for the rider and the horse.  Baffling.

So that is what made my ride yesterday so interesting to me.  For the first time in over seven months, I climbed on top of a horse and rode.  Since Nimo died, I've had a few offers from friends to let me ride their horses.  I could also easily have ridden one of the school horses at my barn.  I think any of them would have been fine for my skill level.  But I never had any desire to ride.  In fact, I sort of dreaded thinking about it or having to respond to the offers.

Then one day I got a message from a friend.  (Yes, that is starting to become a refrain in my life for significant events - ha, ha!)  She said her significant other wasn't going to be able to ride for a few weeks and would I be interested in riding with her on the horse he normally used to help keep the horse in shape.  The horse in question was none other than Donut's mom.  And for that reason, my instant reaction was excitement and my answer was a definitive yes.

So yesterday, I dug my winter riding clothes out of hiding and frantically tried to remember how to even dress myself for a winter ride.  Then I met my friend at her house and I was introduced to Layla, Donut's mom, for the first time.  She was a sweet mare, who was already waiting in the barn for someone to catch her.  I gave her a couple of treats and had no trouble putting her halter on or leading her to the trailer.  She was easy to load, and it took just a few minutes before we were on the road to a nearby park.

When we got there, the horses unloaded easily and I had no trouble tying Layla to the trailer, taking her blanket off, and brushing the mud off of her.  I noticed a couple of things while I was grooming her.  First, she would frequently nose or lip my hand for treats.  She wasn't obnoxious about it; it was more like she felt compelled to check every so often, just in case a treat had magically appeared there and I hadn't noticed.  The way she interacted with my hand felt exactly like how Donut does it.  I suppose there are limited ways that horses can check hands for treats, but something about the way she did it felt very familiar and comfortable.  The other thing I noticed was that she was a little uncomfortable picking up her hind feet.  The way she told me she was uncomfortable was the same way Donut does.  Again, there are only so many movements a horse can make with their legs, but it felt familiar.

Sweet Layla

Saddling and bridling was also done without incident, and it wasn't too long before we were headed down the trail.  As we started walking, my friend reminded me that Layla was still pretty green.  She'd been under saddle for less than a year, and the person riding her was a beginner too.  Apparently she didn't steer very well.  That didn't bother me.  I figured she would be a pretty basic ride and I wasn't expecting anything other than forward motion down the trail and rudimentary stopping and turning skills.

I didn't realize exactly how green Layla was until we'd been riding for awhile.  Her lack of knowledge was disguised well because she was so quiet and willing to follow the two other horses we were with.  At one point, though, she seemed to want to take the lead.  That seemed fine to me.  After all, practicing being in different positions is an important part of the trail riding training process.  As we got in front, I felt her start to accelerate and then she started cantering.  It was a nice canter, and I didn't feel worried about her running away (and I also didn't understand that she lacked some basic skills...).  We went on ahead for maybe 200 feet and then she slowed herself to a walk and the other riders caught up.  

My friend said that if I wanted to do some trotting, we could and that the practice might be good for Layla, who tended to prefer canter as her faster gait.  I thought that was a great idea, so I asked Layla to trot.  Nothing.  I gently squeezed with my legs again.  No response.  I tried a couple of different ways to ask her to trot and it became clear to me that she didn't know any standard cue that I was aware of.  So I asked my friend how her significant other asked Layla to trot.  She said she really didn't know and that maybe I could try tapping her hindquarters with my hand.  I tried that.  Nothing.  I clucked and kissed.  Nope.  Huh.

Then, one of the other horses went out in front and trotted, and Layla obligingly sped up.  It didn't take long for me to assess the situation.  Layla didn't actually know any cues for starting, stopping, or turning.  She wasn't just green.  She was completely uneducated.  She had been going down the trail with the other horses because she wanted to stay with them.  Plus, she felt unbalanced in the trot, so she tried to avoid using it and cantered instead.  And I'm sure her rider preferred it to because her canter was a dream to ride.

Right at about the point I was figuring all that out, my friend casually mentioned that sometimes she bucked when her significant other was riding.  They weren't sure why.  (I had a pretty good idea why, but I decided to reserve judgment unless or until it happened.)  So there I was, riding in a 4,000 acre wilderness with a completely uneducated horse that sometimes bucked, and I was having the time of my life.

Because despite that fact that Layla didn't know anything, she never spooked or got fussy or antsy.  I mostly stayed out of her way and let her choose her pace.  If we were cantering, I would try to encourage her to try trotting for as long as she could.  Then, I looked for opportunities to help her understand one basic cue - that squeezing both of my legs meant she should go forward.  We would stop periodically for one reason or another and each time, I would gently gently squeeze my legs and release them when she started moving again.

 

One of the reasons we stopped was a mystery to me at first.  Layla was behind the other two horses and she just stopped and didn't feel any compulsion to follow the other horses, who continued down the trail.  She wasn't moving or tugging on the reins.  She was just standing still, politely waiting for me to realize what the situation was.  I looked around for something that might be attracting her attention or worrying her, but I didn't see anything.  I looked at the ground, and the footing looked good.  I called out to my friend, who stopped and turned around.  And then she started laughing.  She said, "This is the pear tree."  I looked at her like she was a crazy person.  It is December and there are no pears anywhere.  And pear trees grew in the wild?  She pointed to the ground.  Sure enough, there were wild pears all over the ground.  Layla had remembered from a previous ride and she wanted to stop for a snack.  (I will note that both the other horses with us knew about the pear tree too, and they hadn't stopped.  I was discovering that Layla had an eye or a nose for food.  Just like Donut...)

After Layla had eaten a couple of pears, she was perfectly happy to continue down the trail again.  We crossed a creek without any issues at all, and then the horses started cantering up a steep hill.  Three things happened in short order.  First, I realized my jacket was caught on the horn of the saddle I was riding in.  I had leaned a bit forward to go up the hill and my jacket was unzipped just right to catch the horn.  So while Layla was cantering up the hill, I was trying to get the jacket off the horn.  Then, Layla started cantering a little faster, maybe out of excitement, and she got herself out of balance and panicked.  So she started bucking.  There we were running up this hill, with Layla bucking and me hung up on the saddle horn.  Any two of those things would have been fine, but all three was one too many.  I lost my balance and ended up hanging off the side of the horse.  I managed to keep it together and got one hand on her headstall and actually brought her to a complete halt.  And for just a second I thought I was going to be able to stay on.  Then, Layla took a step or shifted her weight (probably because there was a person hanging off of the side of her), and I knew I wasn't going to stay on.  So I pushed myself away from her and rolled on the ground.  I think she was startled and took a couple of steps, but otherwise she stayed with me.  I got up, dusted myself off, and congratulated myself on what was a pretty good fall.  I wasn't hurt at all.  I didn't hit my head, and I had landed in a deep pile of leaves.

Layla seemed OK, although maybe a little rattled.  My friend told me that the bucking was actually pretty impressive, as was my riding (presumably up to the point where I fell off...).  The bucking hadn't actually felt like a big deal; I've definitely ridden worse, but being caught on the horn meant I couldn't get myself counterbalanced against the bucking.  So lesson learned.  Wear a different jacket when riding this particular horse!

I opted to walk Layla for a bit to let her settle before I got back on.  Also, there were no handy fallen trees or stumps nearby and while I could have gotten on from the ground (Layla is only 14.3), I didn't want to put that strain on her back if I didn't have to.

So we walked and we walked and we walked.  Apparently we had entered the Land of Shrubbery.  There wasn't a dead tree to be found.  Eventually we got back into the woods and I spied what looked like a good possibility.  It would require us to walk into the woods a bit, but the path seemed reasonably clear.  I asked my friend how she thought Layla would handle that, and she really didn't know.  I decided to find out.  Layla walked into the woods with me quite willingly, even though we did get smacked by a few branches and sticker brush.  We made it to the fallen tree and I couldn't quite get her to understand how to stand next to it so I could get on.  I ended up climbing on it (it was at an angle, caught on another tree on its way down) and then asked her to move forward.  That worked and soon she was perfectly positioned and I got back on.

I ran into a bit of a wrinkle then because I hadn't planned a good exit strategy.  Layla would need to back a few steps and turn around to get out.  Of course, she didn't know how to do either of those things based on cues from me.  I asked anyway, like she did know, and through some trial and error, I was able to get her to back up and turn.  Then we made our way out of the woods and down the trail.  I was pretty darn impressed with her at that point.  What I had done with her was second nature to me from riding Nimo out on the trails, and the situation would have caused him no concern.  I have used anything from rotting fences to tree stumps to logs to teeter-totter boulders to ditches to pick-up truck tailgates to get on, so I am really accustomed to using whatever is available.  But I guess most people are able to get on their horses from the ground, so they don't have to resort to such creative methods to get back on in the wilderness.  So not all horses are used to such shenanigans from their riders!  However, I can report that Layla is perfectly fine, which could be useful in the future.

Our next obstacle was a corn field.  We were riding in a wildlife management area and I guess part of that management is planting giant fields of corn and leaving the cobs on the stalk for deer and other animals to eat through the winter.  Well, guess who knows food when she sees it?  At first I was clueless when Layla kept trying to walk off the trail into the corn field.  And then I realized she must be seeing or smelling the corn.  I didn't let her eat any, mostly because I figured it wasn't a good idea to let her just eat her way down the trail and she'd already had the pears plus an assortment of twigs, leaves, and berries that she had been periodically snacking on throughout the ride (can we say endurance horse, anyone?).

After the corn field, my friend asked if I wanted to do some trotting again.  The other rider with us pointed out that after the bucking, I might not want to do anything other than walk.  But I felt like as long as I could keep Layla from cantering too fast, she would probably not buck again.  I was certain the bucking had been because she felt unbalanced at the faster speed.  It felt exactly like when the same thing had happened with Nimo.  He would get really worried cantering up hills and start bucking.  While I wouldn't be able to work with Layla like I had with Nimo (i.e. spending years working on it), I felt pretty comfortable that I had a system to control her speed enough.

So we worked on trotting off and on for maybe the next 20 minutes.  Layla tried to do a little more trotting and we got in some absolutely amazing canter.  The bucking actually seemed to re-calibrate her (and maybe me too) and there were a couple of times when her canter, which was already quite nice, felt like floating.  She connected to my seat and I even got a subtle bend in her thoracic area with gentle thigh pressure.  It was truly amazing.  The even more amazing thing is that I worked for probably 12 years to get that kind of connection with Nimo, and I got it in about an hour and 20 minutes with Layla.  I've only ridden one other horse with a canter like that, and it was an Arabian mare I had for 15 years, who died a little over a year before I got Nimo.  If Donut inherited that canter, I am going to be in heaven!  

I did notice that she only wanted to use her left lead and that she felt stiff to the right.  But that was an issue for another day.

One other issue I noticed was that she was in a curb bit, and that was just not the right bit for her, given her training.  My friend explained that she wanted to be sure her significant other would be able to stop her if she got too excited and it was a safety thing for a green rider.  While I can understand the importance of keeping a rider safe, I have come to believe that the best safety lies in teaching a horse clear aids, having a rider use those aids consistently, and spending a lot of time in the saddle practicing those aids.  A strong bit simply confuses the horse, destroys trust, and disguises problems (until they manifest themselves as balking and bucking and whatever other undesirable behavior a horse can think of).  I don't think you need to be an advanced rider to apply those principles.  You just need to be aware and consistent.

What we decided is that we would try a snaffle bit with her the next time I ride.  That way, I can work on teaching her how to turn.  I don't think you can teach turning with a curb bit.  It simply is not designed for that.  I watched a video that Mark Rashid has in his classroom on Facebook and it really broke down the basics of how different types of bits work (and why you should never, ever use a Tom Thumb bit).  I kind of knew those things before, but the video presented the information so well, I feel like I understand much better now.  And I am convinced that basic horse training can be done in either a side pull or a snaffle in much the same way.  So I'm going to give that a try with Layla the next time I ride and see how it works.

We wrapped up our ride after about two hours out on the trails.  Layla seemed a bit tired to me - we had actually done a fair amount of trot and canter work on hills - plus she had been dealing with a new rider who had a new way of communicating with her.  I'm sure that was exhausting.  But the best news was that my strategy of taking advantage of opportunities where I could use my legs to ask her to move forward when she was going to move forward anyway to follow the other horses was paying off.  By the end of the ride, I could tell she was starting to understand.  What a smart mare!

When I was telling another friend of mine about my ride, she was sort of horrified that I rode a horse with so little education out on the trail and possibly questioned my sanity.  And you may be too.  But all I can say is that riding Layla, with her lack of education, was still significantly easier, less intimidating, and less anxiety-inducing than riding Nimo.  Part of it was her height.  She is probably at least 9 inches shorter than Nimo was.  But there had to be something more.  I can't put my finger on it, to be honest.  I just felt safe on her.  And I am looking forward to a ride next weekend (assuming the weather holds, which it may not).  I feel excited about working with her, and I feel like I may have gotten a little bit of a view on what riding Donut may be like. 

The other thing I learned is that I do actually have riding skills as well as an ability to understand a horse other than Nimo under saddle.  I'm also starting to understand the draw of catch-riding in endurance.  It is very rewarding to get on a new horse and find a way to communicate.  And a long trail provides a wonderful opportunity to build a relationship.  I still believe arena work has a very necessary place in horse training, but there is a lot that can be accomplished out in the wilderness if both the horse and the rider are willing!

Week 3 of December

This week passed with zero breakdowns.  Although my husband reminded me that I was not the happiest camper when I was cleaning, purging, and organizing in the family room one day.  That is true, but I get like that every time I clean that particular room.  My daughter could be a poster child for Hoarders R Us, and the two rooms most affected are her bedroom and the family room.  The good news is that the room is picked up and superficially clean.  I still want to do a deeper clean and a little more reorganization, but it is good enough for now.

After getting that cleaning done, I felt so good about my life that I both wanted to and had time to bake cookies with Gemma.  We get a kids cooking kit for her every month and we used one of the recipes from the December kit.  (The kit is from Raddish Kids, and we have found the recipes to be reasonably easy and usually pretty tasty.  The recipes often include a tactile component, like rolling cookie dough into a ball and then dipping in sugar, which Gemma loves.)  We made Chocolate Snowballs, which really didn't look that much like snowballs when they were done baking, but they tasted pretty good, which is the most important thing:)

We also had several days of warm weather, with daytime highs in the mid-60s.  I took the opportunity to work on getting Donut's tail clean.  I haven't posted about this particular issue yet, but I will cover it in more detail at some point.  The short version is that Donut is more averse to water being placed on her body than any horse I've ever seen.  She doesn't mind being rained on, she will drink out of any container, and she will happily walk through deep puddles, but if you come near her with a spray bottle, a hose with water coming out of it (she is fine with the hose and will even pick it up and play with it) or even a damp cloth, she acts like she is a vampire and I just put holy water on her.  I will post about my efforts to work with her separately, but I did want to share my success from this week.

I got a brilliant idea to use a bucket to wash her tail.  (I will note that it is only brilliant because it worked.  Had it not worked, it would have been a catastrophic mess!)  I have been avidly reading the posts on Pro Equine Grooms, and I remembered reading one that mentioned using a bucket to soak the tail before washing it for stubborn dirt and stains.  Well, Donut will eat anything if you put it into a bucket.  I mean anything.  I have yet to find something she won't stick in her mouth.  And she associates buckets with food.  So I decided to take that love of food/buckets and see if she would let me get the bucket with water near her tail.  

I waited until afternoon feeding time, when Donut would expect to be eating for awhile.  Generally, if she is eating in her stall, she's pretty happy to let me do whatever I want (as long as it doesn't involve applying water to her body - ha, ha!).  So I casually walked into her stall with a little bucket.  After first letting her determine that it really was just water in the bucket (she had to drink some to be sure), Donut went back to munching her hay.  So I stuck the bottom of her tail in the water.  And she was totally fine.  I went through little bucket after little bucket, soaking her tail for maybe 30 seconds each time, until I decided to upgrade to a 5-gallon bucket to see what would happen.  Again, she was absolutely fine.  So I went through bucket after bucket after bucket.  The water turned almost black within about 20 seconds of soaking, so I dumped it and get fresh water.

 

Finally I felt brave enough to try some soap.  I used Shapley's Easy Out No-Rinse Shampoo in case my experiment failed and I had to leave some of the shampoo in her tail.  The tricky bit was that the shampoo was in a spray bottle, and I wasn't sure how Donut would feel about that.  As it turned out, she didn't care at all.  So I coated her disgusting tail in the shampoo and then went through several more buckets rinsing it out.  Right about at the point that the water was starting to look not gross after each rinse, Donut let me know she'd had enough by walking around her stall a bit.  So I wrapped things up and rubbed a little Mane 'n Tail Conditioner in the tail and congratulated myself on my genius idea.  (If only my brain could work like this even half of the time, I would be in great shape!) 

And in case you are wondering, Donut still feels exactly the same way about spray bottles, water coming out of hoses, and damp cloths as she did before I washed her tail.  For some reason, she must think of her tail differently than the rest of her body.  It's both fascinating and irritating.  But at least it gives me something to work with.

Speaking of spray bottles, I also finally got around to mounting a towel bar in my tack locker for storing spray bottles.  I can't remember where I saw this particular hack, but it is one that I've wanted to do for years.  I'm so tired of searching for bottles and having them fall over and leak and buying another bottle of something I already have because my bottles are so unorganized that I can't tell what I have.  And I purged the products while I was at it.  I actually found a bottle from before I had Nimo.  (So over 17 years!)  I know because it was labeled with the name of the horse I owned before Nimo.  I can't believe I've been hauling that bottle from barn to barn for so long.  Now, all my spray bottles are neatly organized and easy to get to.  (I used this towel bar.  It was annoying to mount because it doesn't come with a template, but I really like it now that it is up.  My experience seems pretty consistent with a lot of the reviews on Amazon.)

There is even room for another bottle!

But I didn't forget that it was December and I was supposed to be doing Christmas stuff:)  My goal for the week was to write my Christmas letter and get the Christmas cards in the mail.  I admit that I had been sort of dreading writing the letter.  Usually I look forward to it, but I just wasn't feeling the words this year.  What I decided to do to help was to get a new template.  I used to write an actual letter, which I thought was entertaining and delightful, but several people told me that it was too long at two pages.  I'm trying not to judge here, but if a person can't read two pages, what is this world coming to?

Maybe 2 or 3 years ago, I started using a template that forced me to fit everything on one page.  Also it looked nice.  I had ordered it from a shop on Etsy.  This year, I decided to shop around and see what templates were available.  And I found some that included pictures as part of the template.  Which was just perfect.  

My one regret about doing my Christmas card so early was that I hadn't thought to include a picture of Nimo or Donut on it.  Normally, I just have a picture of Gemma (because once you have a kid, that seems to be mostly what people care about), but Nimo was so special that I really wanted to include him somehow.  The pictures in the template were a great way to do that.  I searched until I found a template with four pictures in it, and ordered it and downloaded it.  Then writing and popping the pictures in was so easy!  I had it written and printed within a couple of hours.  (I used this template.)  I am definitely planning to do something like that again.

I spent the week stuffing envelopes and writing short notes to as many of the recipients as I could.  I like to personalize the card whenever possible because it seems like it adds something over just sending a card.  By Friday, I had all the cards sent!

 

Working on the cards felt a little more Christmassy too once the warm weather we had chilled and bits of what was an incredible winter storm passed through on Wednesday.  Some areas north and west of us got 6+ inches and parts of the Northeast got 40 inches!!!  We probably got about two inches that kind of turned to slush and ice because we are almost always on the rain/snow line.  So the ice kind of sucked and not all of it has melted yet, but Gemma was thrilled to go sledding, and it was nice to see some white outside as we approach Christmas Day.  

The narwhal and candy canes are hanging in there!

We love how our magnolia tree is a built-in Christmas tree!

But we didn't neglect our cherry tree:)

The ducks were initially horrified by the sudden change in their circumstances, but they eventually adapted:)

I also used the storm as an opportunity to see how Donut handled some nasty weather.  I never worry about horses when it is just snowing, but we were getting sleet and then rain as the temperature hovered around 32 degrees.  Freezing rain is a condition that can definitely cause problems for some horses, especially when it is paired with wind, as it was in this case.  Donut is turned out all the time except for a couple of hours in the afternoon when she comes in to eat her special food.  So she was out in the weather all day with no blanket, came in for about an hour and a half, and then spent the night in freezing rain, again with no blanket.  The horses had plenty of hay and they do have a run-in shelter that they seem to use if they need it. 

I spent a good two hours out at the barn that day monitoring Donut, and if I had felt at any time that she was struggling with her body temperature, I would have worked on drying her off and kept her in her stall overnight.  But she seemed fine.  She was quite wet, but showed no indication of being cold (e.g. no shivering, no hunched hindquarters), and when I turned her out, she went straight to eating hay and didn't even bother to turn her butt to the wind.  

I'm sure it wasn't fun being out in the storm, but I think horses are equipped to handle bad weather in most cases.  It is my strong preference to avoid blanketing if I can.  I never blanketed Nimo unless I had to keep him clipped through the winter, although I would occasionally put a rain sheet on if we had unseasonably cold weather combined with rain.  I'm hopeful that I can follow the same process with Donut.

There are several reasons I don't like blanketing, although I can certainly understand why people do it.  It can be hard to watch your most beloved pet standing out in miserable weather that you know would make you uncomfortable.  And some horses definitely do seem unable to cope with extreme weather.  But I don't like blanketing because I have never found a barn where the staff can consistently follow my instructions.  Mostly they overblanket, but once I discovered that one of the staff (not at the barn I am currently at) had turned out a fully body-clipped Nimo with no blanket in temperatures right around freezing.  He was lucky that someone found him shivering and got a blanket on him. Overblanketing is not good, but turning out clipped horses without blankets could be risking their lives.  I'm simply not willing to risk it.  So if I can't monitor the horse every day, I don't blanket.  Alternatively, if I need to blanket, I commit to monitoring blanket changes both morning and night.  At my current barn, if I leave a note explaining what I want each day, my instructions are always followed.  But I need to be on top of the weather and that gets exhausting after several months.

I also don't like how filthy the blankets get.  And washing them usually removes the water-proofing (at least in my experience), so then they are pointless for the constant wet weather we have here during the winter.

Plus I've seen a lot of horses either hurt themselves with a blanket or they just play with it and shred it.  Nimo once expressed his dissatisfaction with a Rhino turnout sheet by somehow getting it completely off and then ripping it so thoroughly that he separated all three layers (the inner liner, the waterproof membrane, and the outer cover) and leaving it in a pile that looked like a carcass right in front of the gate.

Not to mention that Donut is growing - she grew five inches in length over a two and a half month time period.  So I don't want to have to buy a new blanket for her every month unless she really needs one.

Anyway, enough of my blanket digression.  I did one more thing this week.  I made a "baby" album for Donut on Shutterfly.  In the past, I've always wanted to do a real scrapbook to document memories.  But the reality is that between my husband and I, we take thousands of pictures a year.  Downloading them off of our phones, organizing them on the computer, choosing which ones to scrapbook, and then actually scrapbooking them has become an exercise in futility.  So I decided that starting with 2019, I would no longer even try to do a scrapbook for anything.  Instead, I would use Shutterfly to make photo albums.  It is a much faster process and my chosen photos are essentially backed up on Shutterfly.  Plus, if something happens to the album, I can reorder it (assuming Shutterfly still makes it).

I had already been working on an album for my daughter, and I was so in love with the process that I decided to start getting Donut's photos organized.  I think I made the album in about three hours over two days.  It is already ordered and on its way.  I'll definitely share some pictures and a video when it arrives to let you know how the final product turned out.  In the meantime, here is a picture of the cover:

To wrap up this post, here is a video of a very spunky Donut from a few days ago (before the snow).  

Donut's Second Week

One thing that I had started worrying about with Donut was how quiet and calm she was all the time.  I mean, I appreciated it, but I am pretty sure it isn't normal for yearlings to be quite so chill when their entire lives are changed overnight.  However, as Donut settled in, she started to come out of her shell a bit and she started reacting to a few things around her.  I took that as a good sign and considered it part of her development.

She did get amazing at both being caught in the morning to come in to the barn for the day and at coming up to me in the evening if I got there after she'd been turned out.  After about a week, I started turning over her turn in/turn out to the barn staff.  They reported that she was doing well and was easy to handle.

Donut waiting for me to bring her in for breakfast

That gave me an opportunity to come out later in the evening (when it was cooler!) and practice bringing her in from the field and working with her a little.  Whenever she saw me come up to the fence, she would quietly walk up to me from wherever she was in the field.  (I think she learned that if she moved quickly, the other horses would come too and she wouldn't be able to interact with me as much.)  This video shows her walking from mid-field to me.

 

I also finally got a chance to untangle one of the biggest knots in a mane I'd seen.  Her mane was actually pretty long for her age, and it was nice to get it all brushed out.

Donut's mane naturally falls on the other side of her neck, but I brushed it out on the opposite side to make sure I got every last tangle out.

And Donut started feeling more comfortable in her new home.  She started rolling in the leftover hay each night when I would turn her out.

I was also continuing to lead her around in the big arena.  But one night, I had her out there while my daughter was riding, as was another boarder.  And that turned out to be too much for Donut to handle.  She got very rambunctious, although she never tried to yank the lead rope out of my hands.  It was very clear, though, that she was worried and had some energy to burn.  So after my daughter and the boarder were done riding, I turned Donut loose and encouraged her to run around to see if that would help her feel better.

I could watch this filly trot forever...

It really didn't.  She was still pretty energetic after running around the arena for several minutes.  So I ended up turning her back out.  But that episode did get me thinking about how I could help her to settle if she got wound up.  (Cue the vast expenditures from my bank account on training videos and books...I'll tell you all about it over the next few months!)

BTW...If you are wondering what the orange tag is in her tail, it is a cattle ear tag with insecticide on it.  A friend of mine had been experimenting with tying them in her horses' manes and tails and reported good results.  Because Donut was leery of being sprayed with fly spray, and I hadn't had time to work on it with her, given all the other stuff we were doing, I opted to put one in her tail.  I'm not sure it did much, because the flies really didn't seem to bother her much in the first place.  Amazingly, the flies were not that bad and horse flies, in particular, were few and far between.  So I don't really know if it worked or not.  But I will try again next year and I'll probably tie two in her mane and one in her tail.  It would be cool if it did work, though.  I hate spraying poison all over my horse, and Nimo actually developed a bit of an allergy to it over the years, so I had to save it for times when it was really needed.  Plus, the effect always seemed to wear off quickly.

Anyway, by the end of the second week, I was starting to see Donut's real self, which included some reactivity and balking when she didn't want to do something.  I wasn't bothered by those things, though.  If she didn't react to anything, it didn't give me much to work on with her and it would be hard to figure out what I should be doing to help her.  (I would later regret this sentiment more than once, but those are stories for future posts!)

I never got tired of seeing this face greet me each night!

Week 2 of December

I didn't have nearly as many Christmas activities this past week as I did the first week - whew!  But I was working on a couple of presents and that took the majority of my time through the early hours of Thursday morning.  Like pretty much all of my projects, it was more complicated and time-consuming that I thought it would be when I came up with the idea.  I would give more details, but one of the recipients might see this post, so it will have to remain Top Secret:)  Anyway, I wrapped the presents up at about 1 am on Thursday, and enjoyed the peace of mind that comes with getting something done.

I was also super diligent about wrapping gifts.  I still do have a few to wrap, but the majority are done and under the tree, which is a Good Thing.

 

I felt so good about my accomplishments, I took the time to give myself a manicure.  This particular one is courtesy of Jamberry's Safari Party Lacquer Strips.

Meanwhile, my husband worked on our outdoor Christmas decorations and got our little narwhal out with his candy canes at the base of our magnolia tree.  He also put up a unicorn, but the unicorn did not survive the rigors of being one of our lawn ornaments.  So for now, the narwhal is on its own.

Donut also had a good week.  She finally got to interact with Frank, the barn cat.  She's been interested in him for awhile, but he was never that excited about letting her touch him.  One day, though, he was desperate for love, and he decided that it would be OK if Donut checked him out:)

 

 

Donut also got a package!  I discovered what looked like fun snacks for horses on the Emerald Valley Equine website.  They use a beet pulp base instead of bran, which I liked.  Although beet pulp is definitely something I use with caution due to the high calcium (relative to phosphorus) and iron levels, I thought it would be fun for Donut to try some new foods.  She is quite possibly the most food-oriented horse that I have ever met, and she will eat just about anything.  I tried the SantaMash first, and she didn't even hesitate to start slurping it up as fast as possible!

 

 

So I finished this week much less stressed than last week, although a bit tired from my late night.  I'm looking forward to getting some cleaning done and visiting with a friend this weekend.  And then I'll be back to the Christmas grindstone with writing a Christmas letter and getting cards in the mail for next week.  

Donut's First Week

I tried to keep my goals for Donut pretty simply for her first week in her new home.  The most important thing I wanted was for her to get used to a routine.  One thing I had really debated about was whether I should keep her on the same schedule that I would have used for Nimo, which was in during the day (from about 8 until 4) and out all night.  (Virginia summers can be challenging with the heat, humidity, and bugs, and many horses appreciate being inside during the day with a fan to get a break from those challenges.)  My other option was to leave her out all the time and just bring her in to the stall to eat her grain and alfalfa and then go out.  What I ended up doing was leaving it up to Donut.  If she seemed OK to be in the stall during the day without being stressed, I would stick to the regular barn schedule for stalled horses.  But if being in stressed her out, I would adjust her schedule to be out more.  That might normally have been hard to do if all of the horses in her field were stall-boarded horses who were in during the day, but the field that we (the barn owner and I) had chosen for her was all field boarded horses, so they would be out to keep her company if she needed to be out during the day.  The one thing I worried about if she was out all the time was that she might be stressed by the other horses picking on her until she settled in to the herd.

As it turned out, Donut was absolutely fine being on the regular barn schedule.  She had zero issues adjusting to being in a stall for a big chunk of the day.  She was very food-oriented and she also slept a lot, so that occupied her time quite nicely.

One thing that I did was to lead her in to her stall in the morning and lead her out to her field in the afternoon.  The staff who work at my barn have varying degrees of skill with horses, but none of them were necessarily comfortable handling a yearling whose training was pretty basic and whose reactions to lots of new things were unknown.  I planned to handle her exclusively until I felt comfortable that she knew what was expected and could handle it without getting reactive or balky.  In particular, the walk to and from her field was pretty long, so there would be a lot of opportunities for things to maybe not work out so great.  Of course, I wasn't really sure how long that would take...

What I discovered was that Donut led really well.  It was clear to me that someone had put in some quality time working with her.  My friend had said she hadn't worked with her that much, but someone at the rescue where she had been born must have worked with her.  She responded to pressure incredibly well, and I discovered that she would lead regardless of my position.  So, if I was in front of her, she would follow.  If I was at her head or her neck, she led well.  And if I was farther behind, like near her withers, she would also walk forward quite willingly.  Sometimes a bit too willingly, though.  Her natural walk was insanely fast.  I still wasn't sure if she was gaited, but her walk left no doubt that she had gaiting in her bloodlines.  If I had been riding and wanted to get from Point A to Point B really quickly, that walk would have done it.  However, I am a short person who doesn't necessarily walk that fast, so we practiced walking at human speed:)

The most amazing thing about how Donut settled in during her first week was how absolutely calm she was.  She had zero reactivity to anything (with one exception), including when the bulldozer was felling trees near her field.  On a couple of mornings, we had to walk within 100-200 feet of the falling trees, and she didn't even give them a second glance.  (I mentioned it to the friend I had gotten her from, and she said her husband had been doing the same thing on their property while Donut was there, so she probably got used to it then.)  Regardless of why, Donut outshined many of the other older horses, who had lived on the property for years and whose fields were much farther away from the work being done.

I also started walking her to the arena and around the farm a bit to help orient her, in case she ever escaped from the field or got away from someone.  I feel like it is important for animals to understand where they are.  So the only time she ever reacted to anything that first week was when I had her in the arena while my daughter was riding.  Gemma got on the mounting block and scraped her boot across one of the steps.  Donut basically teleported herself about 10 feet in a nanosecond.  (Note to self, be prepared to fall off Donut a lot if we don't get that teleportation skill managed...)  It didn't take more than a few seconds for her to recover from her fright, though.  And we spent the rest of that session, as well as a couple of others, working on the sound of boots on the mounting block.

Donut next to the offending mounting block.

I did find a few other things for me to work on, too.  The first was catching her in the field.  She would actually come up to me, but then she tended to move her head around a lot for putting on the halter.  I found that if I looped the lead rope over her neck first, that would be enough to make haltering much easier.  She also didn't quite understand how to move through a gate without me leading her through.  It wasn't a huge deal because I generally wasn't dealing with other horses trying to push through the gate, but I did start working on having her move through the gate on her own.  (I actually ended up taking her out to the round pen a few times, to work on it that way first.)

I also really needed to trim her feet.  My friend had had them trimmed a couple of months before I'd brought Donut home, but I was not particularly happy with the trim.  (In fact, I haven't been happy with a trim I've seen in person for so long I can't remember the last time - maybe 8 or 9 years ago.  The farriers in this area all seem to leave the toes too long, thereby also causing underrun heels.)  I thought all four hooves were too long and the angles were too upright.  In fact, it looked like her front feet had a bit of a curl at the bottom, which I wanted to address pretty quickly.  I also suspected, based on how Donut tried to kick me in the head every time I even went near her left hind leg with a hoof pick, that maybe her experience with the farrier hadn't been super positive.  I didn't know her too well yet, but her general personality was friendly and low-key.  And I could touch her all over her body and brush her with any brush all over with no reactions or sensitivities, so her defensive behavior when I tried to pick up her left hind hoof was likely to be the result of a bad experience.  Given that behavior and my past experience with farriers, I had no intention of letting a farrier touch her feet until after I had a chance to work with Donut and make sure she was comfortable having her feet picked up, moved around, and rasped.  (And even then, my plan was to use a farrier only if I felt like I couldn't get her feet balanced on my own.  I would probably have to haul her to one of the equine clinics in the area to use the farrier they had on call for corrective work to get one that was good.  None of the ones whose work I have seen at my barn or on other horses' feet has impressed me.)

When we'd loaded Donut to bring her to the barn, I don't remember having much trouble picking up her front feet.  And she really wasn't being too difficult about picking them up for me now.  Rather, she had some trouble holding them up.  Which is probably pretty normal for young horses that haven't had their feet handled much.  Nimo had similar issues, but to a much bigger degree, when I got him.  He despised having his feet handled, and it literally took me years to get him to the point that it wasn't a struggle.  (Nimo had never had his feet handled because back then, and I think still now, some people think you shouldn't handle or trim a young horse's feet.  That is garbage.  I'm not an expert, but after dealing with the consequences of having a very big horse who didn't want his feet touched, and who needed years of corrective farrier work to get his feet balanced again, I feel pretty comfortable saying that one of the most important things you can do with a baby/weanling is handle their feet and trim them.)  Donut was not even in the same category of difficulty as Nimo had been, so I felt pretty good about my ability to work with her and improve her skills within a short period of time.

During the first week, I think I was able to start rasping her left front hoof.  I just did 2 or 3 rasps at a time and then set her hoof down.  I'd let her rest for maybe 10-20 seconds and then pick the hoof up again.  My plan was to do a little each day until I felt like I had trimmed all I could on that hoof and then move to the next one.  And I missed Nimo quite a bit right then.  Even though his feet were hard as rocks and over 6" in diameter, I realized that when I trimmed his feet, he did a lot of supporting action on his own to keep the hoof stable against the action of the rasp.  It is incredibly hard to rasp a hoof when the owner of said hoof moves the hoof with the pressure of the rasp.  Donut also had a hard time keeping her foot stable, meaning that I had to operate the rasp with one hand and use the rest of my body to help her hold her hoof still.  So despite her tiny feet that were pretty easy to rasp, the trimming process was much harder than I originally expected.  That actually made me feel much more comfortable with my plan to do a little each day on my own, rather than having a farrier do it all at once.  

I know zero farriers who have any patience with horses that struggle.  Their response is never understanding that the horse is having trouble with its balance or that the horse is inexperienced and needs some help.  The most common response is to yell at them.  If that doesn't work, they hit them or jerk on their faces and then probably go on Facebook to complain about owners who don't work with their horses.  The thing is, it is true that many owners don't do as much as they could with their horses to help prepare them for a farrier appointment.  BUT, it is hard for an owner who doesn't know how to trim or shoe horses to replicate the scenario of actually being trimmed or shod.  Most owners don't have the tools or the hoof stand that farriers use.  They probably don't know quite how to put the leg in the same positions that a farrier does, which are different than the ones people use to pick out their horse's feet.  They certainly don't have fires in their vehicles and anvils and shoes and hammers and nails.  

So I think there really needs to be this understanding that asking a horse to stand quietly and comply with an owner's request to pick out its feet is not the same as asking a horse to go through the lengthy and probably uncomfortable process of having its feet trimmed.  Because farriers often use positions for the legs that are most comfortable for them and not for the horse.  (I get that being a farrier is hell on a person's body and I'm not trying to be critical here.  I could never trim multiple horses in one day.  But I think it is important to know what we are asking, which is that the horse holds his legs in positions that are not natural or comfortable so we can perform a necessary task.)  I actually ended up doing some leg stretching and moving exercises with Nimo to help accustom him to the movements that a farrier would ask for, and that definitely helped.  But it was still hard for him.  Mostly because farriers wanted him to hold his feet up for longer than he felt comfortable with, so he would snatch his leg away when he couldn't hold it up anymore.  Which would make the farrier mad and cause the farrier to hit him.  When I started trimming his feet myself and gave him more frequent breaks, I almost never had an issue.  In fact, I could do all sorts of things with his legs, like rest them on my knee while I looked more closely at the hoof or rasped one section more carefully, or move them around so that I could see better or use the rasp more effectively.  All I had to do to get that flexibility was allow him to put his foot down every minute or two.  (And yes, I explained that to more than one farrier, but they never listened.) 

Anyway, enough of that digression.  Back to Donut's first week.  The biggest issue we had all week was one that I had expected.  It was how she would interact with her new herd, or rather how they would interact with her.  One thing I learned with Nimo was that the first introduction to a new herd can be really hard for a human to watch.  Nimo was actually run through a gate by the alpha horse in his new herd.  (In retrospect, the horses should just have had more room.  I was forced to do the introduction for a 12-horse herd in the sacrifice paddock, which was simply not big enough.  It would have been better to do it in a large field.)  Donut was at the age where if she lived in the wild, her herd members would be starting to expect "big horse" behavior from her.  At 15 months old, she would probably still be forgiven for minor infractions, but she would be expected to acknowledge other horses' space and access to resources.  Her domestic herd would probably expect her to act like an older horse right away.  I wasn't sure exactly how things would go, but I was determined to give her the best opportunity to minimize the drama.

The first thing I did was to pull out the two more dominant horses from the field, leaving the two ponies.  One pony was the one we were leasing for Gemma and the other was one that Gemma had ridden for lessons many times.  Gemma had also ridden the other two horses for lessons a few times, and I felt like I knew both fairly well from all the time we'd spent retrieving one or the other pony from the field for months.  All the horses were good, calm horses under normal circumstances, and I felt comfortable handling them.  But I knew that could change in an instant with a new horse.

After the two horses were safely stashed in the arena, I brought Donut in and the introductions began.  The two ponies were not particularly excited to see a new horse in their field.  But Mini (the one in the fly sheet and the one we were leasing), was really not that fussed about it.  She just wanted to go back to eating.  Butters, on the other hand, was well-known for having the sass of a much bigger horse, and she definitely expressed it with Donut.  On the whole, though, there wasn't much more than posturing, so I decided to bring one of the other horses in.

Mini, Butters, and Donut try to communicate with each other.

Stormy, a large pony, was the next horse I brought in.  He tends to be a little introverted and there was very little drama with him.  He simply stood in one place and gave off an aura that even I could feel from 10 feet away.  He basically said, "Don't come near me," and Donut paid attention.  I don't know if I've never been around a horse like that before or if I just never had the sensitivity to notice before, but I have never felt anything like it.  That pony never moved a muscle, flicked an ear, or blinked an eye.  He stood perfectly still and communicated everything through his energy.  Very cool.  And I appreciated the lack of drama, for sure.

Next I brought in Candy Cane.  Candy Cane was the leader of this field.  I wasn't sure quite what to expect from him.  He is used as a beginner lesson horse and while he can be a little in your pocket, he is pretty quiet.  Yeah, well not when he discovered a new horse in his field!  He chased after Donut quite a bit at first, until she figured out a pretty smart strategy.  She just stood still about halfway out in the field and let him run himself and the rest of the herd around.  It was really interesting to watch, and I didn't know quite what was going on at first.  Below is a sequence of videos from the first few minutes.  The first one shows Donut being chased a bit, but left on her own too.

This next one shows chasing and then Donut starting to figure out a strategy.  You'll see her disappear behind the run-in shed and not come back out.

This third video shows Donut's strategy in action, as the rest of the herd runs around without her.

This final video shows Donut out by herself and realizing she can eat because the rest of the herd is busy running around in a different place.

Over the next several days, I watched with no small anxiety as Donut had trouble integrating into the herd.  Candy Cane chased her a lot, sometimes running her the length of the field.  Even Mini, who was the lowest horse in the pecking order, would make faces and pin her ears at Donut.  I just made sure that there was always a hay pile well away from the others and that Donut knew where it was, so she could eat in peace.  There was also grass in the field that she could eat and she was coming in to eat during the day, so I knew she was getting enough to eat, but I couldn't help feeling worried.

Anyway, after a week of the shenanigans, I caught this sequence of pictures as Donut re-introduced herself to Candy Cane and the two became friends.  (It wasn't long after this set of pictures that one of the barn staff told me that Candy Cane would let Donut share his grain.  Which was a really big deal.  While the other field boarded horses were fed their grain in nose bags, Candy Cane got his in a regular feed tub on the ground because no one would dare mess with him.  Donut endeared herself so much to him that he would let her take the first bite from his grain.  Then the staff would halter her and take her out so she didn't eat the rest of it.  Horse behavior and interactions are so much more complex than I used to think they were.)

Whatcha lookin' at?

From that point on, Donut would also often share Candy Cane's hay with him.  Even though she remained the lowest horse in the pecking order.  I was especially interested in this situation because of something I had noticed with Nimo.  He was the alpha horse in his herd, but he often shared hay or ate next to the lowest horse in the herd.  He never shared hay with any other horse.  I have read in a couple other places in books about mustangs that the herds don't have a linear pecking order.  Instead, different horses have different responsibilities.  For example, the stallion doesn't typically lead the herd anywhere.  His job is defense.  Instead an older mare will be responsible for setting the direction and pace of the herd when looking for food or water.  And it may not always be the same older mare.  It has never been clearer to me that we need to get away from simplifying the way horses interact with each other, and by extension, the way they interact with us.  And I'm so thankful that I have a horse who is giving me opportunities to see things in a new way:)