A Horse and Her Coat

Ok, so it's my coat, not her coat. But still, it's Stella in a coat. And she's adorable, even when she looks annoyed.

As you can see from her expression, Stella was not entirely sure about wearing a coat. But she did it nonetheless. In fact, she has worn my coat two different times now. She has never tried to shake or buck it off. She did not get all silly and fancy or anything when I put it on. Even when she has gotten a little bouncy she seemed to be trying to bounce about while making sure not to lose her coat.

She has tried to reach back to smell/bit/grab the coat a few times, but never with much determination and was easily dissuaded. So far she does stop more often with a sort of "get this thing off my back now" expression, but she walks again when I laugh at her and tell her to walk.

For those of you who may think that coat looks familiar, yes, that is Grandpa's coat. It fits me now. I have been quite pleased about how well Stella has taken to it. She seems to like when I wear it (though not so much when she wears it, go figure).

New Adventures

Stella's days have fallen into a fairly regular routine. Mom and I take Stella out in the morning and in the evening to walk around either the indoor or the outdoor arena for a mile, then let her run and (maybe) roll in the outdoor arena. We end the session most often with 10-20 minutes in the grass pasture for a bit of grazing.

She did get a bit of variety when a woman brought her horse in for lessons and left her trailer open. With her permission, I decided to see how Stella would react to loading into and out of a trailer. I wan't entirely sure, since her only experience with trailers has been being chased into or out of them by the BLM.

Stella loaded in like a pro. Loading out was a bit more complicated, but only because she had to figure out how to get her back half down from the trailer once her front half was down. She never tried to jump out, she just got stuck once with her front feet on the ground and her back feet in the trailer and gave me a look like "well, now what am I supposed to do?" After 3 or 4 times Stella had the whole process figured out and went in and out of the trailer with no hesitation or trepidation.

Stella's biggest adventure to dat was getting her hooves trimmed. I didn't want to let her go too long without getting this process introduced, and her feet could use it. They weren't bad, but now they are all set to get well into winter. She was not entirely settled, but she actually did pretty well until she knocked down the hoof stand by jerking her foot and getting it tangled just before the farrier was finished and got herself spooked. The farrier didn't help the situation since he wanted to jump right back in and get ahold of her again and she was having none of it. I eventually got him to wait the moment it took for her to settle herself and got him to let her see his tools again so she could confirm they weren't a danger. I don't like the hoof stands, and our farriers back home never used them, but I know that a lot of farriers won't work without them for one reason or another. I also have never seen a different farrier at the stable, so I don't know if it would be possible for me to bring in a different farrier to do Stella. Oh well, this guy did a good enough job, he just didn't have the best "horse-side manner" to put and keep a young horse at ease.