Mustang Saga

We had a pretty good weekend. On Saturday Katia, Bella and I "walked the loop." It's four miles and goes through a pretty treed area for part of it. Bella was not her usual easygoing sweetie pie. It was windy and slightly rainy, and she wanted to go home. Less than a mile into the walk she threw a little fit trying to set her neck and pull away from me. We worked through it and then our issue was stopping and backing. She was happy to zone out and walk but wasn't paying attention to when I stopped. Then she wouldn't soften her face and back up at the same time. It was an either/or type of thing. She was worried about a big rock painted orange next to a yellow sign. Really scared of it. But she touched it for me. Still scooted away from it twice though. Other than that the walk went well. We passed some horses that were very excited to see us. Bella got a little excited but settled when I told her we weren't visiting.

Yesterday I went to a tack swap that turned out to be pretty small. I got something for a friend, and there was a saddle there that might have fit Tonka, but even though it wasn't expensive I didn't look too seriously at it. I need to sell my Aussie before I start looking at saddles.

In the afternoon, or shall we say evening at 4:00, thanks to the stupid time change, I worked with Scout a bit. I was thinking now that I have a new training stick (I gave mine to a friend) I can be more effective at keeping him out of my space. Well, it turns out that he's an angel once the halter is on. It's just in the stall that he thinks he can walk right through me. Which he also does to Tonka, so maybe it's a baby thing rather than a lack of respect. I suppose in a herd they'll put up with certain nonsense from a baby. Tonka doesn't always put up with it, but Scout still does it...

Today I think I'll do some basic round pen work with Tonka. We've done very little of that, and he will kind of "hook up" with me, but kind of not. So I think I'll go through all the motions until he's got it down as well as Lyric did. It's fun when people are so impressed that you can lead and do complicated maneuvers with your horse without a rope.

In other big news, something got our hens last night. I think it must have been an owl. We've heard a big bird in the trees the last few nights. I thought it was neat, didn't even think of the danger to the chickens. They were all still alive, but were very stressed and had bloodied combs. I couldn't see any other major injuries in the dark, but one hen had lost a lot of feathers. I feel terrible. We've never had anything attack them before. If we'd replaced the coop covering it wouldn't have happened, but I thought since we've never had an attack they'd be fine. Wrong. Now I'm going to have to keep them locked in their house at night until we get the coop re-covered. And just hope that they all make it. They could be riddled with puncture wounds. I better get going and check on them.