A chilled Filly

Saturday 6 September 2014

Moved again

It's been a hectic few days to say the least.
I've been riding in the big field with Bonitao a fair bit. The other day he spooked and, stupidly, I did not have his overreach boots on. As a result he pulled the front right shoe half off. Once back at the yard I removed it and inspected the hoof damage. Not too bad, but I wanted to ensure there was no further damage prior to the farrier being able to get there and put a new one on. As a result I decided to leave him in overnight and asked he be left in all the next day.
The following day I went to the yard at around 3:15 pm to get him ready for the farrier who was coming at 4. No sign of Bonitao in his box which was odd. I thought maybe he was in the indoor school. or another stable whilst they mucked the stable out. No sign of him. He was not in his field either. I expanded my search and finally found him a further two fields away with a different horse, the gate of which was not held closed.
He was a little jumpy and his neck and shoulders were covered in dry sweat, a sure sign of mental stress. On giving him a good look over I found a graze on his left hind leg as well. Obviously something very bad had happened.
I rang the yard owner and asked what on earth was going on. He said that the staff had gone to skip him out. Instead of moving him or tying him up outside they had just left the stable door open and parked the wheel barrow in the doorway. They know that Bonitao has a habit of running away from them so this was not a bright move. He took his chance and jumped the barrow through the stable door. I assume this is when he got grazed. Then he ran to his field. Finding the field gate shut he continued up the path and pushed his way through the unlatched gate (there's no latch on it) into the field I found him in. Then, of course, they couldn't catch him.
Despite the yard owner knowing I was at home on standby and therefore contactable by phone nobody bothered to let me know what had happened. If they had I could have gone to the yard and retrieved Bonitao from the field before he damaged his hoof further. As it happened he did chip the hoof quite badly and the farrier struggled a bit to put the shoe on.
When I suggested that really this was a very stupid thing to happen and that I was really very angry about it the owner implied it was all the fault of the horse. I asked if we couldn't get some staff who were better at handling horses. The owner does not like any criticism of his staff so said we should leave the yard as soon as possible.
Things have been building for us to leave as the standards there have dropped further and further so I didn't argue.
We quickly rang around our friends and one said we could come to her fields immediately. So the day before yesterday Bonitao was moved, yesterday being devoted to getting all our other horse equipment out of the place. Stable mats were the hardest to move, and the smelliest.
Whilst there we were told by other liveries that the three mares in Fillys' field had escaped overnight and wandered the yard until the morning. Then yesterday another horse was found in the hay field having escaped from a different field. Later on I heard a further four had got out of their field. So that was 8 escapees in a period of around 24 hours. There is also a race horse who has such deep wire cuts on his legs that it is possible he'll never be ridden again. The fencing at the yard was one of our bigger concerns. Bonitao still has the remains of a cut on his neck from the sharp point of a broken wire fence (I found hair on the fence), which has still not been repaired.
All in all I find I am sleeping better at night now. I had been getting the growing feeling that it was only a matter of time before there was a really bad accident there and we were almost perpetually worried as to what state we would find our horses in when we went to the yard.
We will miss many of the people on the yard, and their horses. But in the end the draw they provided for us to stay was outweighed by the worry about the welfare of our horses and it was the right time for us to leave. Filly being away only made this easier as we only had one horse to move.
So we have a new adventure now. We are in a beautiful part of the Chiltern hills with a lovely set of fields. The lady we are now with does Natural Horsemanship as does her daughters. In fact some of them went to JRFS for a course this summer and loved it. It will be nice to be at a yard (even if only temporarily) where we have like minded folks, though being somewhere without a school or stables is going to be a bit of a mental shift. I can't thank them enough for coming to out rescue.
Enough waffle for one post. I'm now going to the fields to go out for a hack with them and be shown the local riding areas :) .

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