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!