Week Two

This week was about continuing to become friends, introducing Surya to Scary Stuff around the barn, and riding!

Day 8: (Sunday) Groomed her, scratched her, walked around her field, then led her around the indoor for another 45 minutes. Lots of carrots, but connected to voice commands and good behavior. Evidently I missed the visit of the farrier. This made me sad and I pouted. I am definitely on the list for the next visit, which will be by the end of March. In the meantime, I am welcome to try and get in contact with him and ask him to come out to the farm again sooner.  I think it likely that Surya’s toes are going to get very long. Oh well. She’ll survive, and the farrier comes once a month, so her feet will be perfect once she gets on the schedule.

Day 9: (Monday) Groomed her, scratched her, walked around her field, then led her around the indoor for 30 minutes. When I deemed her calm, I attached my new bright white lunge line (soon to be gray-brown) and asked her to move off into a circle. She acted the same as she did on the lunge in California.  That is, she is excellent at walk, trot, and stop transitions. The canter still needs some work, but that will come with time. At the end of the lunging exercise, I whistled as I do when greeting her in the field, and she walked to me in the center of the circle. Suddenly, she experienced an excruciating itch on her shoulder and swung her head around to scratch it with her teeth. I had been waiting for this moment since she got here, and I immediately attacked the area with my nails. Excellent. Smart human. Here, now do the other side. Her breeder did this with her, and she seemed pleased to realize I was as obliging.

Day 10: (Tuesday) Today was a repeat of Monday. Groomed her, scratched her, walked around her field, walked around the indoor, lunged. Went back to field and hung out. Just a normal day in the ‘hood.

Day 11: (Wednesday) It was raining today, and I had a brief panic attack when I drove up the driveway and Surya was not in evidence. Turned out she decided The Shed was preferable to The Rain, and was sleeping inside. I was too tired to do anything remotely strenuous, so I just watched my ARF (Awesome Rider Friend) have a lesson from my trainer, and fed Surya some carrots.

Day 12: (Thursday) Groomed her, scratched her, walked around her field. When I went and rested my arms on fence and gazed across the hay field at the full moon, she came up beside me and looked the same way, then whuffed my hair. I almost wished someone was there to take a picture that I could show to horse-crazy tweens to make them as jealous as humanely possible. Alas, we both lost interest in staring majestically into space, so we went and walked around the outdoor arena. I let her sniff the fake flowers, which she tried to eat.

Day 13: (Friday) Today was a big day for Surya. She was deemed healthy by the barn, and thus was scheduled to meet her new pasture-mates. Including Surya, there are three mares at the farm, and they have an entire large pasture to themselves. Aside from the fact that we were introducing mares, with is typically like asking cheerleading teams from two different schools to comingle, the other mares are very attached to each other. To start, I brought Surya up to one of the small runs adjacent to two of the geldings’ pastures and let her free. She trotted around with her tail curled over her back like an Arabian as the geldings galloped up to meet Ms. Sexy over the fence. Surya met the electric fence, but stood her ground and pinned her ears in unmistakable warning. Thereafter she carefully acted as though it did not exist.

When she settled down a bit, we first put Chestnut TB Mare in the adjacent run for twenty minutes and let them introduce themselves. Then we switched Chestnut TB Mare with Grey TB Mare for another twenty minutes. Then we all took a deep breath and let Grey TB Mare and Surya out in the mare’s pasture together. It was clear that Surya was dominant, but Grey TB Mare is so easy-going that she was okay with it, and just wanted to be friends. The trouble started when we put Chestnut TB Mare in with the two of them. As soon as we let her loose, the TB mares started galloping around at top speed, and Grey TB Mare leapt with all four feet off the ground, then bucked in mid-air. It was glorious and dangerous. Surya followed in smaller circles at a more sedate pace in an extended trot and collected canter. Eventually they settled and got down to the business of Surya’s and Chestnut TB Mare’s differences. Chestnut TB Mare wanted to be dominant, but Surya was having none it.

That being said, Surya did not try to be dominant either. She is simply very independent. She doesn’t try to boss anyone around, but she doesn’t take crap from anyone. She is perfectly happy to be turned out by herself, or hack out by herself, or go graze by herself. She is also perfectly amenable to hanging out with her mare friends, and initially tried to make nice with the new mares.

Chestnut TB Mare was initially very jealous of Surya’s half-hour long relationship with Grey TB Mare, and spent all of her time trying to herd Grey TB Mare away from Surya. Surya ended up trailing after the other two as they negotiated their way across the pasture. It was like a middle-school clique, and I could almost see Surya rolling her eyes. As a result, Surya spent the rest of the just turned out with Grey TB Mare, while Chestnut TB Mare went in an individual run.

Day 14: (Saturday) It’s official! Surya is out of quarantine, and I moved my things into the boarder tack room in the barn. Surya gets to spend two more nights in her field, and then will move into the barn on Monday. She started out the day by getting turned out in the mare field with Chestnut TB Mare; without the distraction of Grey TB Mare, they quickly became friends.  Or rather, Chestnut TB Mare loves Surya and Surya tolerates her.

Today, after two weeks of relationship-building and trust exercises (I didn’t let her fall on me yet, that will come later), I rode her! I brought her into the barn, and let her assess the situation for a good hour. I got her to go into a wash stall but she would only stand in it for a few seconds. That was okay, something to work on. She is trained to stand tied, but had never experienced cross-ties before. So as to minimize new experiences in one day, I had a friend hold her while I groomed her and tacked up.

As expected, she was look-y at all the people (everyone there turned out to see the new horse) and the indoor, and fast. But, I loved her, my trainer loved her, all the people loved her.

We have a long, long way to go to become the perfect eventing and endurance team. I am so excited.