Several days ago we went to the yard in the evening to see Filly. The box was empty, she was still out. A quick search found her in a field with a mare called Moo. As they were the only two out we felt that we could not bring Filly in for some playing and so went to the pub instead. A few days past before we could speak to the yard owners and she is indeed staying out 24 hours a day, which given her past history is great news. Finally she is out with a horse that can teach her how to be a horse.
Last night we went down to give W a quick lesson with Filly and so I hobbled down to the field with Ritchie and W to collect her. The following interactions we witnessed between Filly and Moo actually became the subject of the lesson and we never did actually catch Filly.
To start we were informed that they were difficult to catch without a bucket of feed. This was interesting as Filly had never been difficult to catch before, she always caught us ! Rather than just go in direct line and CATCH her I thought it would be more informative to see what the problem was first. As I am not very mobile Ritchie went to get Filly using all the usual techniques of walking up to her and turning away when she showed interest. Pretty soon Filly was walking at liberty towards the gate behind Ritchie.
Moo then came charging over and drove Filly away from us and so they cantered back up the field together. There then followed a master class by them both in horses playing the seven games. Whenever Filly tried to come with Ritchie Moo would intervene showing driving games, porcupine games and even the squeeze game by the gate. It became obvious that Moo was the boss and also that she did not trust us one bit and did not want her herd taken away. Filly stood up for herself on occasion giving a great demonstration of horse phases. As Moo was cantering behind Filly she got a bit too close. Filly glanced round (phase 1), flattened her ears (phase 2), lifted both hind legs off the ground in a threat to kick (phase 3). Moo got the message and backed off a bit.
The plot thickens a bit today. We went down this morning and they were both in. Filly is going to be ridden soon by one of the girls at the yard so we wanted to do a session on accept the saddle. Ritchie collected Filly from her stable and brought her to the indoor school. As soon as she was out of site Moo made a tremendous fuss in her stable. Neighing that approached a scream, kicking the door and general mayhem. We made sure she was not going to hurt herself and got on with the session. Filly by contrast was her usual chilled self to the extent that the first thing I did was "touch all over" and "place the feet" from my chair.
This was all very interesting and explains Moo's behaviour the previous evening. She suffers from tremendous separation anxiety and the thought of us taking Filly away did not appeal to her one bit. As a result she did all she could to keep her herd with her.
As for Filly and her saddle, it went very well. We let her go at Liberty, stirrups flapping, and made her trot and canter round the school in both directions. There were a few half hearted broncs to start with but she soon settled into a nice confident canter. The plan tomorrow is to repeat the exercise but add in a small jump to get her to arch her back with a saddle on see if that stimulates a buck, if not we can move onto the riding soon.
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