My Life for a Fecal Sample

The first warning that my guardian angel would be working overtime yesterday was the sound of thudding coming from inside the run-in shed.  The second warning was when I saw flashes of equine bodies moving at the speed of light through the window of said run-in shed.  The third warning was when I saw Freya standing a safe distance away from the run-in shed, with an expression on her face like what I imagine when I see people comment with a picture of eating popcorn on controversial Facebook posts.  Normally, she is the alpha mare of the herd and she is crowding the door of the shed, along with Donut.  I should have found it suspicious that she wasn't there.

But I was focused on retrieving Donut so she could come hang out in her stall for what I hoped would be the shortest time possible to produce a fecal sample for the semi-annual parasite tests that my barn does.  It's a good practice.  Normally it isn't a big deal.  In fact, I could have saved myself the trouble hours earlier in the day when one of the barn staff texted me and asked if I wanted her to rotate my horses through the stall to get the samples.  I asked her to handle Star, but to leave Donut and Freya for me because I wanted to work with both of them anyway.  That was at 8 am, when I had energy and plans and motivation.  By 2:30, I was not feeling any of those things quite so much.  Part of the problem was that I expected it to be a bright and sunny 40-degree day.  A welcome break from the below-freezing highs we'd been experiencing.  Alas, by the time I got to the barn, the sun was gone, and all that was left was a damp cold that sucked the will to live right out of me.  It was cold, and I just wanted to go home.

But no, I was heading into what sounded like a disaster.  And it really was.  A new gelding had been introduced to what I think of as my herd of mares, specifically Freya, Donut, and Star, a few weeks ago.  He came from a field of rambunctious geldings and was used to engaging in hard-core stallion-like play on a daily basis.  His owner as well as the owners of several other horses in the field were understandably concerned about this behavior because it had led to innumerable wounds, lacerations, and puncture wounds, many of which required veterinary visits and unwanted expenses.  Another gelding had lived with the mares quite successfully for months before moving to a new home, and I think the assumption was that any gelding would be fine.

If you own mares, then you know that isn't true.  Not every gelding can live with mares and perhaps more importantly for this particular gelding, most mares do not engage in rough-housing.  That is stallion behavior.  Mares kick and bite things for fun.  Thus, geldings who wish to engage in body slams are going to find themselves ostracized pretty quickly.

I will say that Freya and Donut give this gelding peace as long as he is quiet.  (Star tries to ignore him, which is her standard MO for all other horses.)  The problem is that he doesn't want to be quiet.  He wants to play.  Donut will run with him for a minute or two, but even her youth doesn't lend itself to the kind of rough play this gelding really wants.  So, every day around feeding time, he is desperate to get out of the field.  I think he is ever hopeful that he will be taken to his old field and his regular buddies.  But alas, he simply goes to his stall, where he spends 16 hours accumulating more energy.

By yesterday afternoon, the gelding had escalated his behavior quite a bit.  He was flying around the run-in shed, quite literally bouncing off the walls...and Donut.  Donut, being Donut and not Freya, was not mature enough to understand that the solution to this problem was getting out of the run-in shed, so I could halter her and lead her through the gate farther down the field.  (Although this solution probably wouldn't have worked anyway.  Gemma told me that she tried it a few days ago and only survived because she was leading Freya who defended herself and Gemma from the gelding, who tried to run them down.  Note that Gemma is no longer allowed to go to the field without an adult.)  Donut truly believes that her needs and desires take precedence above any other horse's, especially if it involves food or her person, which unfortunately on this day, was me.  So she was doing her best to hold her ground at the door of the run-in shed, and taking a bit of a beating for it.

My first and most immediate thought was to get her out.  She was clearly not safe.  I tried opening the door and using my lead rope to move the gelding back.  Normally that is very effective.  Yesterday, it nearly got me killed the first time.  The gelding was in such a state of emotion that he could not recognize any commands or body language from me.  So I got back out of the run-in shed, latched the door just in time to avoid it being slammed open, and decided on a new tactic.

Donut worked with me and while the gelding made a lap around the shed, she stuck her head over the door so I could slip her halter on, open the door, and evacuate her.  It took maybe three seconds, and we almost didn't make it.  So it was with a great sigh of relief that I latched the door and ducked to avoid getting hit in the head by the gelding's head as he frantically tried to get out.

Thinking that the current problem had been resolved, my brain started to process the situation.  Regretfully, while my brain was ready to settle down and analyze, Donut's brain was not.  I have no idea how long she'd been in the run-in shed with the excited gelding, but probably more than a couple of minutes.  So she was frazzled and rattled and traumatized.  It would be nice if Donut could process her trauma by meditating.  Instead she processes by moving her body.  Specifically, she likes to be as far up in the air as possible.  And if she can get all four feet off the ground at the same time, that is even better.

So it was really an out-of-the-frying-pan-and-into-the-fire kind of situation for me as I watched with a mixture of terror and awe as my little Donut (who is becoming not so little) reared, leaped into the air like a gazelle, and galloped in tiny circles around me, slipping and nearly falling in the mud several times.  I don't think I have ever seen that much athleticism from a horse attached to a human.  If it could be harnessed, I think Donut has the potential to be an Olympic-level athlete in something.  (Preferably with someone else riding her...)

The bad news was that all that rearing was putting Donut's front feet significantly closer to my head than my head felt comfortable with.  The good news is that there were plenty of people watching by that time, so I was sure one of them could call 911 if I was injured.  Interestingly, no one offered to come help me...

I'm not sure how long it took to get Donut from the run-in shed to the barn.  It's only about 800 - 1,000 feet, but it felt like two miles.  We were having trouble making any forward progress because rearing isn't really a great way to move forward and the tiny circles, while very fast, were mostly in place.  Eventually, though, I figured out a strategy.  When I lunge Freya using Science of Motion techniques, one of the things we do is go in a circle and then straight.  Circle and then straight.  Sometimes the straight is only a few steps, but at this point, I was willing to try anything.

So that is what we did.  Donut would go up in the air and bounce around and then circle.  I'd put my hand on her shoulder to remind her that there was a human attached to her and then see if I could influence her forward a bit.  It worked, although we still had pretty slow progress.

The other thing that we had the opportunity to work on was getting a rope wrapped around Donut's leg.  Luckily, I'd already done some preliminary work on it in controlled settings, so when it happened now, Donut had a frame of reference.  What was happening was that despite my best efforts, sometimes when Donut was rearing, she would get one leg on the other side of the lead rope while she was in the air and then come down and try to spin, thus wrapping the rope around her leg.  (In my defense, I was also trying to avoid getting kicked in the head.  I'm not that great at multi-tasking.)  I would have let go if she'd panicked, but she didn't.  The one thing that went right in this whole mess was that she didn't freak out when she felt the pressure of the rope.  In fact, it broke her reactivity for a few seconds, so I could unwrap the rope.

I hand-graze Donut every time I handle her.  Often I use that time to drape the lead rope over her body and gently wrap it under her fetlocks or around her hocks.  I was doing it as preliminary work for ground driving, but it was potentially a life saver because I didn't have a panicking horse with a rope around her leg.

 

Eventually we did make it to the barn, and Donut started to settle.  I walked her to her stall and she discovered a beet pulp mash and alfalfa hay, which made everything right in her world again.  Meanwhile, I needed to sit down and contemplate my life choices...

It is becoming clear that the gelding is not a great fit for the field he is in.  I've already talked to the trainer that works with the horse and she is open to finding a solution, so I feel confident that we will figure something out.  And I'm trying to figure out how to give my guardian angel a raise...