She's just moved to a new home, still in her little herd of 3. They've been there for a few days, I didn't want her to get too settled into thinking she's retired, so went for a visit today. Took her out of the field, initial anxiety, then attempts to eat, then shuffling feet around, then the realisation that she's OK on her own but still knowing were they are.
After a few minutes, happy to stand with me doing nothing, still alert but not anxious. Moved her a bit further, one of the others called, anxiety returns, I wait. When I get a calmer horse again, we tack up, Cait tacks up Kyriane, we go for a walk, Ali on Organza, she's alert again but not too worried.
She watches Kyrie doing some trotting around and seems ok with that.
So I get foolishly overconfident and tell Cait she could go and do her own thing. As Kyriane hooleys away it's too much for the girl, me trying to get her attention back by using the lunge line seems to just make it worse, Ali does an (actually not very) involuntary dismount, Organza takes off after her friend, I lose a bit of skin on my hand as I didn't let go fast enough.......
Then we get her back, she's still stressed, actually shaking, she takes off again and heads off back to the field after a brief hesitation over whether to stay with Kyriane or go back to Netty. So we are clearly going to have to take things much, much more slowly. My fault, have forgotten what Fina was like at first.......
So we went for another walk, but just around the edge of the field and along the vines a bit so she could still see Netty, and then got Cait to move Kyriane away slowly........and when she was calm about it she got her to come back as a reward.
It's a start......
2 comments:
Refresh my rapidly failing memory... who's Organza?
Ali and your hands ok?
We're fine. Organza is a Merens mare who is very dominant and basically feels she has to look out for herself as she doesn't feel that people are up to the job. I did some stuff with her briefly early last year, but since then she hasn't done much at all, so some work to do!
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