Weekends are nice!

We went for a nice long walk today and ate lots of grass and berries. Here’s Chance, learning to pick his own berries:

I keep thinking I don’t have any training updates because I mostly just take Natty and Chance out to graze every night, but I do have one big accomplishment to mention. I can now walk them both on lead ropes at the same time. We don’t go fast, but we’ve gone pretty far that way. This is really important because sometimes we meet other horses while we’re out and about, and I don’t want Chance getting into trouble because he’s loose. Also, another boarder is going to let me use her trailer for some practice loading, and the trailers park on the other side of the driveway, so I want to make sure we keep close together crossing it. I haven’t started that yet, but maybe tomorrow we’ll walk over and around the outside of the trailer. Maybe I’ll open up the door and let Chance look inside. I am not going to try to load them the first time over there (we haven’t walked around the trailers before at all). I don’t plan to take them anywhere right now, but I want to know they’ll load if I need them to. I’ll provide an update of the progress on that front later!

Strange little horse

“Mommy, I’m not so sure these are dogs… I better sit here on your feet and protect you!”

Billy dog is still learning about the horses – he is scared of them for the most part (which is usually safer, I think). He and Chance are getting a little braver about each other, though – Billy was brave enough to give Chance a kiss on the nose last night, and Chance was his usual mellow self and didn’t react. Natty sniffed Billy over really carefully and nuzzled through his hair one time (yes, I watched her like a hawk!), and now she ignores him. This is good for Natty since she sometimes chases the border collies. I don’t  mind if she ignores him, but I don’t want her chasing him because he doesn’t know to watch out for her. Right before we left, Billy did try his “Play with me!” bark and bouncing around in front of Chance, but to no avail. I scolded him for the barking, and he stopped. Mostly he’s pretty quiet, and since he never chases the horses, they don’t  mind him too much. The only tricky part is trying to get through gates with the dog and both horses because they all want to bunch up too tightly. We’ll keep working on it, though!

This last picture is Chance’s tail. He has the most wonderful spiral curls! I’m going to comb them out so they won’t turn into dredlocks like Natty’s, but I wanted to get a picture first. They are such pretty curls.

Growth Spurt

I just had to share this – I measured Chance today, and he is 13 hands and 460 pounds! When did he get so big??? I thought for sure I was measuring wrong, but I did it twice. The baby is getting huge. Look how big he looks when he tries to nurse now:

We took our longest trail walk yet today. We went up and down some more hills. Natty was pretty excited to be going a new way and really wanted to trot, but she stayed fairly under control. She did want to run down a big hill (I let Chance do this, so I guess she figured she should get to do it too), and she ended up sliding a ways because it’s so steep. She didn’t freak or anything, and after that she walked more carefully down the rest of the hill. We all worked up a sweat on this walk! We all love berries, and the blackberries are ripe all along the trail, so I’ve been picking them for all of us. Chance sucks his up like a vacuum cleaner, nice and neat, but Natty grabs them with her lips and smashes them while she’s trying to get ahold of them. Here’s a picture of one of my berry hands:

Most of it washed off, but I will be going to work with purple fingernails tomorrow. Natty loved it, though, so it’s all worthwhile. She has some berry marks on her coat from scratching itches with purple lips. Too funny. She tried picking her own a few times but quickly realized it was better to let me do it – saves her from bitter green berries and prickly vines. She watches me to see when I pick them, and if I only get myself some, she sometimes gives me a shove with her nose as if to say, where’s mine? She pays careful attention to everything I do, and it seems to help her learn things really fast. Only the important things, of course, like where the berries come from!

New Pictures

Their favorite part of the day: the magic red buckets arrive!

Chance’s face: all big-boy hair now, and isn’t he beautiful?

Natty did the sweetest thing tonight. I had taken them out to walk and graze on the trail along the creek, and some horses and riders came along so I took them back to their turn-out and stood with them until the other horses passed by. Natty came up behind me ever-so-gently so that her shoulder and neck were touching my back, and she put her head over my shoulder and just stood there with me watching the other horses. It was almost like she was protecting me. Chance was at my other shoulder, and I really felt loved by these sweet horses. It’s so wonderful to see that kind of behavior from Natty. And of course Chance is still the best hugging-horse in the world, although I’m about an inch away from not being able to reach all the way around his girth anymore. He’s over 400 pounds already!

Finally, an update!

Hi everyone! Sorry about the long time between posts – I went back to a full-time job this month, and it’s more difficult than I thought it would be to balance work/life/horses. Natty and Chance are doing well. My regular vet checked on Chance while she was at the barn a few days after the last post, and she said his gelding incision looked totally normal and he didn’t need to be on antibiotics. She reminded me how long a little cut on another horse took to heal and pointed out that Chance’s incision was much bigger than that. She also told me not to look at the incision again for 2 whole months so I won’t worry about it anymore. I have been looking every once in awhile, and it is healing, slowly but surely. It sure isn’t slowing him down any! These pictures and video were taken when he was 14 weeks old:

This seems to be Natty’s absolute favorite type of grass. When she first got here last spring, this area was under water, and she waded out there with a pair of ducks and grazed the whole area down. Now she hasn’t been out there all summer, and it all grew back nice and lush, so I’ve been enjoying taking Natty and Chance out there in the evening. I lean on Natty and relax while she grazes, and Chance runs circles around us both. I wish I had more time to spend with them – sometimes when it’s almost dark and I’m walking away from them, Natty whinnies to me. I hate that I have to leave her. I’ve only been able to spend about an hour and a half a day with them during the week. I really need to find a horse property so I can keep them at home and spend more time with them. Here’s the video of Chance running circles around Natty while she grazes:

Oh dear, more medical difficulties

Well, I had the vet out again today to look at Chance’s gelding incision. It turns out he has a condition where the remaining tissue swells, and that’s the lump I’ve been seeing, and it is keeping the incision from closing properly. So now he’s back on another round of antibiotics since he has had a big open would for 2 weeks, and he’s also on a big dose of anti-inflammatory  for the next 5 days to try to bring the swelling down so things can start to heal. If that doesn’t work, the vet will have to debride the tissue, which will require another sedation. The poor little fellow! I just wish something in his life would be easy for him. Thank goodness the vet clinic still takes my calls after the last 3 months!