Mustang Saga

Today I think John was thrilled when I surprised him with a trip to go get two tons of hay. In my defense, I thought it was supposed to rain so I hadn't planned the trip until I woke up and found it was only overcast. The hay is nice. The bales are light and tight and so easy to move. There are no weeds that I can see, and it has some alfalfa but mostly grass. Bella was the only one who seemed to prefer the old hay over the new. I'm going to feed half old and half new to keep the alfalfa amount down.

The last couple days I've lunged Tonka to get him some exercise. I took him out of the round pen to make a bigger circle with a long lunge line and me walking a big circle on the inside to make his circle even bigger. I worry about his legs with the circle work. He's probably old enough that he won't get more splints, but even so a bigger circle is less strain.

I eventually wanted to ask him to lope so we could start working up to doing it under saddle. He's been tight and uncomfortable at the lope for a long time, due to his EPSM. Anyway, yesterday he offered a lope, so I took it, and it was nice. For him, anyway. Today we did it again, and I was very careful to listen to whether he was breathing. His breath was strong and rhythmic, and he seemed very comfortable loping along. We didn't work long, and most of it was warm up and cool down. But I'm sure it was good for him. And it made me feel good to see him moving so well. We'll get good at doing it together this year, eventually.

We also took a walk down by the creek to check out the water levels. I'd been surprised to see Huck on the other side of the creek without having to swim. It turns out he used a strategically placed island to leap over. The water level has gone down a lot though.

Scout got to do some work today too, and got a fair amount of exercise just fretting about Tonka going out of his sight down by the creek. I didn't take him out yesterday, but it was good for him to be separated from Tonka for a while.

That's my fun stuff for the past few days. Tonight we have a big wind coming through, so the girls got fed inside the barn and the boys got their hay in feeders so it wouldn't blow away. Next winter I hope to be down to the same number of horses as we have stalls so nobody has to tough out weather like this. Not that Tonka will use a stall anyway... (I should point out that the boys do have shelter options now, but they don't use them - that area scares them for some reason.) I hate to think about horses moving on, but we need to cut back expenses. So Cisco will be for sale, Soxy will go back to her old owner if she can take her, and Bella - well, I don't know. It'll depend on whether she's sound or not. I don't think I'll be able to bear euthanizing her if she isn't sound, so we might end up with three horses. Not fun to think about this kind of stuff.