Mind the Gap!

The world is a very confusing place for poor little Faith. Just when she had got her head around stepping from light coloured concrete to black stable mats, and vice versa, the universe just has to throw her another riddle to solve!

We have had quite a bit of rain overnight (Yeehaaa! Grow hayfield, grow!). It had blown in at an angle, so when I opened Faith’s stable door this morning there was a foot wide strip of dry, light coloured yard, before the wet, dark coloured yard started. Faith was rather perturbed by this, and took a lot of coaxing to come out of her stable this morning. When she did come out, it was a little bit like the scene of Bambi on ice. The whole yard was a different colour! Eeeek!

We eventually got out through the barn and into the field, albeit in a bit of a rush, and Faith stood patiently while I took her headcollar off, and soothed her with a bit of carrot and a cuddle.

The weather has been pretty pants today, and I felt ever so guilty that Faith was not wearing a rug. My neighbour has kindly given me one of her youngster’s old rugs that he has outgrown, but I have not yet tackled the whole ‘putting on a rug’ thing with Faith yet. She has worn a rug before, but at the moment I am taking everything ever so slowly, as she is such a reactive little poppet.

Interestingly, all the neds have shown a whole lot of interest in a poor little Hawthorn bush that grows inside the field. Normally, it is a round, fat little bush, but I have noticed that the horses have completely stripped all the new growth of the little tree, leaving it with a very bad case of split ends! I have just looked up the properties of Hawthorn in my herbal book, and apparently it is very good for lowering blood pressure, and acts as a vasodilator. Apparently horses with navicular or laminitis are particularly partial to the sprouting buds. This is very interesting, as since Faith’s arrival, the horses have been on pasture that has been rested, so perhaps they are feeling the richness a little bit too much. I shall make a point of taking digital pulses etc. every day. Thanks for the ‘heads up’ Mother Nature!

I gave Faith a lovely groom this evening. This is the first one I have given her. She gave quite an extreme reaction to the brushes when she first saw them, leaping from the front of the stable to the back in a single bound. So I used the brush as a target, and she got a treat every time she touched it, and we slowly built this up until she was happy to be brushed. In the end I was able to give her quite a vigorous grooming, which was just as well, as she has discovered that it is perfectly safe to roll in our fields, and duly caked herself in heavy clay!