Stella is Home!

After a great number of trials and tribulations, including canceled drivers, cancelled stables, hard to find rental stock trailers, and apparently impossible to find rental trucks that will let you tow and aren't moving trucks, My filly Stella is home! Her transport came in the form of a wonderful woman from a Facebook group that I joined to find local fellow horse lovers. She had a trailer and was willing to haul for me, hooray! (I'm not naming names because I forgot to ask her permission).

So, we made it down to Burns, OR Wednesday night with only one major headache along the way and stayed in a hotel so we could pick up Stella (4590) early the next morning around 7am. She's so little and perfect!

I opted to leave her tag on and not put a halter on her. She is just a baby, and I didn't think that I would have much trouble getting ahold of her. Besides, having a lead on her didn't mean that she would walk with me anyway, so why bother yet.

It was a long drive, made a bit longer because we took a few breaks (at our driver's recommendation, and a good idea) to let Stella rest in a stationary trailer, rather than having to be on the road and moving the whole time.

We got to the stable just before 5pm and got Stella unloaded into the round pen without an issue. After convincing her that the low bucket with water was not scary but in fact a good thing, and letting her eat and drink for about an hour, I finally went into the round pen with her.

This is not to say that I had not been just outside the round pen from the time we took her off the trailer. I had at first kept a respectful distance so she could have her space, but then I decided to see how close I could get without her being uncomfortable. The answer was that I could lean on the fence just above her hay and she didn't much care, and in fact initiated contact and interaction, sniffing and nosing at me. I responded by petting her nose, about which she didn't care, then her forehead, which took her approximately three strokes to get used to.

Once I was in the round pen with Stella I briefly attempted to work her, but we were both tired and she was already responsive to me, so we only went around the pen at a slow trot a few times before giving up and closing the distance.

With only a few sidesteps from her, we were soon to the point where she let me pet her head and neck, and scratch her shoulders and withers. Within two hours from unloading (so about one hour in the round pen with her) she let me untie (not cut, UNTIE!) her tag:

After that success, I decided to try putting on her halter and lead rope. This also went well, with her standing quite nicely while I fumbled about getting her halter tied properly (I bought a new rope halter just for her. It's too big, so tomorrow I will use one I have from horses past.). She wasn't really into the whole leading idea, but I did get a few steps out of her before she spooked when a fellow boarder turned his gelding out to play in the arena right beside the round pen. When Stella stopped trotting about (that was as active as she was in her "spook") she let me get the lead rope back and take her halter off. Then, since she was still standing there with me, I tried putting it back on. She let me do this three more times with no objections.

At that point I called it a night so we both could rest. I will be back out bright and early tomorrow morning to play with her again. Maybe tomorrow we can get her started on leading!