Stella and Snow

So, I do not have any pictures to share on this one, but I figured I could at least update folks on Stella.

Stella was a winter baby, most likely born in early December 2017. She spend her first months frolicking in the snow in the wild. And snow frolicking still seems to be one of her favorite things. Stella loves the snow, and the deeper the better. If she can climb through a snow pile that is so tall it scrapes her belly and her legs completely disappear, she is a happy horse. In the outdoor arena she will walk along with her nose about half an inch down into the snow, leaving a solid track in between her hoof prints as she walks along. When she picks her head up her muzzle will be covered in snow.

Stella also thinks that icicles are a wonderful treat, and she will happily chomp them like a normal horse would chomp a carrot.

All that said, since Stella turned a year old, she has mellowed quite a bit. She does not startle as easily as she used to, does not seem to have the need to run crazy as much as she used to, and has more self restraint. While I can tell when she has lots of pent-up energy, she is much better than she used to be at keeping herself under control until I let her out in the outdoor arena and she can run a kick like she wants to.

Right now even Stella is not so sure about what is left of the snow, since it has turned into slush and sucking mud. It is supposed to snow again in a few days though, and the temperature is supposed to drop below freezing again. Stella does not seem to mind the colder weather, and she does love the snow, so perhaps she will be happy with this turn in the weather coming up. I am not sure I agree with her, but then again I am not a horse, so there's that.

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.

Boots!

Raven bought me boots today!! (Thank you my love!) He bought boots for himself as well, which is wonderful! He previously had said that I would never get him into cowboy boots. After dealing with the dirt that gets inside regular laced shoes and boots however, and after Stella stepped on and bruised both my feet in the space of a few weeks (I was wearing sneakers, having nothing more protective), he changed his mind. He could see the usefulness of and purpose for cowboy boots at the stable.

Things were crazy at the stable today. There is a seminar going on all weekend, and there were horses, people, and trailers all over. Last night a few of the horses for the seminar had already come in and things were off-schedule so we ended up cutting Stella's time out and about short. She was not at all happy about the sprinklers coming on in the outdoor arena when we were in the adjoining pasture. The sprinklers in the pasture came on not long after we left it. I really don't want to think about what would have happened if they had come on while we were still in there. I don't know if there was actually a person turning them on or if the auto stuff just got messed up, since the sprinklers in the pasture weren't scheduled to come one for another hour.

Stella was somewhat mollified when she didn't get outside this morning by getting lots of petting and brushing instead. Some days I think she would rather just get pet and not have to do anything to earn it.

Along with the horses that came for the seminar, there is also a huge mule. Turns out Raven had never been up close to a mule before, so we went to say hello to it when its person had it out for the lunch break today. It is a Percheron cross, so it is an extremely large, quite sturdy animal. It also makes a noise that Stella finds amazing and intriguing. When we had her out this evening (just walking around the drive since both the inside and outside arenas looked like we weren't supposed to use them this weekend) Stella wanted to go and see the mule. The mule's owner says that they smell different than horses, and Stella makes me believe it. She doesn't care one bit about the other horses when we walk past them, but that mule really got her attention. Its braying also made her stop and pay attention. The first time she heard it, Stella spun around with a "What was THAT?" expression.

Even with the excitement and interest of the mule though, Stella will be happy when the seminar is over and she can get back to going out like normal.

A Little Bit of Stella Love

Hello again. I know it has been a while, sorry, life was happening and then I got . . . stalled. Anyhow, I'm back, and there are more pictures of Stella!

Where Stella was fairly brown when we brought her home, she is getting darker again. When she is really brushed down and clean she sometimes looks like the BLM might have been right when they labeled her "black." Usually though she is now just a dark bay. And her white flecks are growing more and more numerous and have spread to her cheeks and the top of her back.

Stella goes out and walks around with us in the mornings. This weekend I upped her distance from .70 miles to a full mile. Most days we walk that distance twice a day, so she is getting in two miles of walking most days. Mondays and Wednesdays are the exceptions, since there is a horse riding class at the stable those evenings. After Stella dragged me across the gravel because of those students I now just stay in stall and love on her. Not that she complains much about the extra love and attention. Love from Raven, love from Mom, love from me, she really doesn't care as long as whoever is in the stall with her is petting and loving on her and giving her attention.

Stella loves getting pet and scratched so much that there are those days where I think she would really prefer to just get loved on and not go out walking. I don't think she would ever turn down going out to the grass pasture though, she loves her grass, and since she only gets to go out to pasture if she goes walking first, she is willing to walk with us.

Horse in a Hat

I wore a hat to the stable to see how I would handle it (My MS means that I usually cannot handle having a brim, and sometimes not even a beanie). Since I was handling it ok, I decided to see how Stella would handle wearing a hat.

She didn't care. At. All.

For that matter I'm not entirely convinced she even noticed until it fell off when she put her head down into her feed bin to eat.

She did give me a bit of a look though, as if to say "Really?" Then I put it on her while we were walking around the indoor arena, and she walked along without any issues. I think she might even have held her head still as she walked so she didn't drop it. 

Stella is adorable, and now I am going to knit her horse hats! I found a pattern for a Santa hat, and reindeer antlers, and a leprechaun hat, and . . . well, I found a few patterns. And she will be ADORABLE!!

A Man on a Brown Horse

I discovered a fear of Stella's today. Up until today she has been sensible about almost everything (with the exception of cars starting up right beside her, but I completely understand that one). Today there was a situation that she was not sensible about, and it took Mom and I a moment to figure out why Stella was reacting so strongly.

There was a good amount of activity going on around the stable this evening. There was a lesson going on in the indoor arena. There were two riders on brown horses in the outdoor arena. The fact the horses were brown will be important. 

Mom and I decided to take Stella out to the grass pasture to let her graze and see if either of the two arenas opened up while we were out there. Now, the grass pasture shares a fence line with the outdoor arena. Not a problem, Stella likes the grass on the other side of the pasture best anyway.

Well, walking out to the pasture Stella was pretty antsy. She had to stop and take a good long look at the two riders in the outdoor arena. I understand that, she has only seen one other person riding in there before. In several previous experiences of Stella's there has been a woman riding a white horse around the arena. Stella has watched this woman ride around, but has not shown any great concern, just interest. But these two riders really got Stella's attention and she wanted to hustle past them at a quick walk, keeping an eye on them the whole time.

We got into the grass pasture fine and Stella took a few bites. Then the man on the brown horse in the outdoor arena began to lope. Stella's head shot up, her eyes showed white, and she ran circles around me, spinning to face the riders as quick as she could every time. Stella was scared. Really scared. She didn't try to pull away hard (there was some pulling, just not what I know she is capable of), but she circled me. Once she took a kick in my general direction when I wasn't running with her, as though she was trying to get me to move and run away too. I held my ground and she stopped circling and stood stock still staring at the man on the brown horse as he went around the arena.

It occurred to Mom first. All of Stella's experiences with men on brown horses running are probably bad. There were almost certainly men on brown horses there chasing her and her herd when she was captured. It was probably a man on a brown horse that cut her away from her dam and her herd. It was men on brown horses who cut her out and drove her into the trailer when I adopted her. Men on brown horses are dangerous to her. They do bad things. They destroyed her world and took away everyone and everything she cared about. Men on brown horses have hurt her and chased her and scared her repeatedly for her whole life. After I realized that I understood her fear of men on brown horses.

We spent at least 10 minutes in the grass pasture, and by the end of the time the riders had stopped running around the arena and were standing at the far gate, and Stella settled down to eat grass, but always with an eye or ear monitoring the man on the brown horse.

Stella was still a bit dancy when we led out of the pasture, and Mom and I decided that she'd had enough excitement for the evening. She certainly got her heart rate up (and mine too).

Back in her stall Stella got brushed and groomed and her feet picked. The farrier was out to do the hooves of one of the other boarders and I went down to see if he had an old rasp he would part with (The stable owner said that he might, since he just throws them away when they get worn down). I want to get Stella used to getting her feet worked on more than just getting picked out. The farrier was working and so I went back up to be with Stella again, figuring on going down when he was finished.

Then the owner went into the barn with the farrier from the lesson she had been giving, so I got in the car an we headed home. I am trying to interact as little as possible with the stable owner. Apparently everything I say or do, especially when I ask a question or voice a concern, is a complaint, and she will kick me and Stella out if we complain about anything more, so my current plan is just to keep my head down, my mouth shut, and avoid interacting with her at all costs and the rest of the staff as much as possible.