A Busy Day

The baby (no name yet, let me know if you have good one!) had quite a day today. In the morning he met a pasture mate (Hershey) in the arena who couldn't care less about him.

Hershey and the baby. I like this picture, he looks like a dressage horse.

Alexandre, the baby, Hershey. Look how narrow his little butt is! Alexandre is 16.2 and Hershey is 16.3...

The baby's first carrots!



Then he got led around the perimeter of the pasture and was a very good boy, excited but walked almost the whole way. He got let loose by himself in there when the 5 horses in the adjoining pasture noticed him and that was the end of the peace for awhile. I let Alexandre in the pasture with him and let our huge wimpy grey gelding in as well.

Rooster and the baby meet while it's snowing.

After the commotion died down and the horses in the other pasture got bored, I let Hershey in too. The four of them just kind of hung out after running around a little bit. Every now and then one of them would take off after the baby just to make sure he knew who was boss. He's so much faster than they are. Towards the end of the day I let Moose, our old bombproof childproof gelding in and all hell broke loose. Moose was determined to chase him down. Baby is running, Moose is chasing him and heaving cause he's so old and out of shape, and the other 3 are running because hey, fun- the herd is running, wahoo! Luckily it didn't last long. We're fortunate to have a pretty big area for them so they all have room to avoid each other.


The pecking order now established, baby on bottom, the two mellow geldings (Rooster and Hershey) will start to befriend him and he'll have some buddies. He got a little bit of grain tonight and a winter blanket on. He also got lots of carrots today, whenever he came over to me on his own he got a piece of carrot. I want him to figure out that every time a person comes by it doesn't mean work. He didn't want to be caught or come near anyone at first, but by the end of the day voluntarily walked up to me a few times.

On another note, I was giving a lesson to one of the boys at the ranch today while it was snowing. He was riding bareback in the arena and was excited to trot. The boy has great balance and steady hands. Old Moose picked up a slow jog and stayed out on the rail. The boy was grinning from ear to ear and was giggling the whole time. He says he LOVES to trot and thanked me again and again for letting him ride. It's my job!