Settling in

Miss Bella has been here for a week now. I'm fostering her for Curly Horse Rescue. She seems to be a very sweet mare, who was well cared for throughout her life. Unfortunately, her owner has Alzheimers and is a long-term care facility, and she needed to find a home for her horses. Unfortunately, her papers were destroyed by caretakers who thought they were worthless. So if anyone recognizes this mare, please contact me! I'm sure she's registered, likely gaited, and I would love to find out who she is! She's somewhere around 18-20 years old, palomino sabino with a pretty bald face. Isn't she precious!





Bella LOVES attention, and loves to be scritched, and LOVES, LOVES her food! So, Bella was a little too eager for her grain bucket, and her hay, and for the past week we've been working on "stay out of my space". She's a quick study, and a very good girl with apparently no fear (how refreshing!) The first day I asked her to "baaaack" while "shooing" her with my hand toward her chest. It took her a minute to think about what I wanted, then she took a step back and got her bucket. We repeat this every day twice a day at feed time. By about the 3rd or 4th day, she tested me. She wanted to see if I really meant it, so picked her head up high and held her head in my space trying to swing her head over my head. So each time she attempted this, I just quickly raised my arm in the air to block her swing. After a few tries she stopped swinging her head, but then just stood there with her head way up and kinda stiff. So I put my hand on her poll and applied gentle downard pressure to encourage her to drop her head (this is John Lyons stuff I learned years ago, and still use it, its one of my favorite ways to get a horse to soften). She clearly never learned this before, and I started to get a quick fear that if she doesn't give to poll pressure, does she tie? I haven't tried yet.

So I just held steady medium pressure until she relaxed her neck a bit. Whenever she relaxed her neck, she turned to the opposite side, so she thought that is what I wanted. On the positive side, she learned that quickly! So she tried just turning her head without any relaxation or lowering, and that didn't get a release. On the final try, she only slightly turned her head, but relaxed it much more and dropped her head a few inches (rather than just relaxing), and I (actually she) released the pressure. She then dropped her nose do her chest, blew, licked and chewed, and wandered off to her hay. She was totally engaged in trying to learn what I was communicating to her!

She hasn't done the head thing since, but today when I approached with her morning bucket, I didn't even have to ask for her to back away from the gate. Once I entered, she tucked her nose to her chest, and energetically backed up nice and soft and round. What a good girl!!!!!

This is the face I see every morning. "Come give me a little scritch! This long mane makes my neck soooo itchy!" She also will maneuver herself to present me her shoulder for a scritch. Lakota, OTOH, spins around and backs into you with her big ole butt!




This side now, please!




And this, believe it or not, is my favorite photo so far. Why would I love this gross, muddy photo of a horse standing all cockeyed and screwy chewing a wad of hay? Because it means that she laid down and slept prone last night, for the first time since she's been here. So she finally relaxed and is content and feels safe enough to lay down and take a good muddy snooze. :-)