Spring break is over

Well, that was a fast spring break. I was back in classes today.

I did not get any pictures over break because it was so wet, foggy, and muddy. Over the course of the week, ALL of the snow disappeared! That made for a lot of mud!

Kachina was still safe in her pen when I arrived home last weekend. I wanted to trim her, and then turn her out with the others. Then all 5 of my horses would be together! Griffin was doing great with the herd and even let me catch and scratch on him, after he hadn't seen me in a week and a half!

Well, we started out on Kachina, but she was so irritable from being penned up, that it took 3 days to trim her! If I was faster, I could have gotten it done much sooner, but she has a very short time where she's good and patient. After about 10 minutes, she becomes very uncooperative. I'm slow and meticulous, so it takes me longer than 10 minutes. And once she'd reached that irritated point, there was almost nothing I could do except leave her be. Even my fancy rope trick around the leg had minor success. It takes forever to trim a horse that either won't stand still, or keeps taking their foot away from you when you just get situated to trim. And I even had my friend holding her head to keep her still. Well, I did finally get all 4 done. Then we led her out into the pasture and turned her loose. Once loose, she completely let loose! She was galloping, bucking, rearing, doing rollbacks, just being plain silly! We thought for sure she was going to fall because the remaining snow was slushy and icy. But she didn't. And she tried to get Griffin to play with her, but he was not really interested. I was surprised. She was so light on her feet and playful. She made Griffin look like a big clumsy oaf. When she reared up and struck out at his head, he just ducked out of the way and halfheartedly evaded her. She pranced and floated over the ground. Hours later, she was still running and playing. No wonder she was so terrible for me to trim. She had way too much energy. She is a very elegant little horse. I need to find some use to put her tiny flighty frame to! She'd make a very attractive little cart horse (she has the cutest trot), but I worry that she might be too flighty for that profession too.

Griffin and Chico are pretty good friends. They'll stand forever and play gelding games (particularily bitey-face).

The mares, well, they'd rather the newcomers just leave them be. They don't play. They just enforce the order.

We also did manage to trim 1 other horse after we finished Kachina. I did 1 front and 1 back to demonstrate on Chico, and my friend did the other 2.

And my super sweet boy sharpened all my hoof knives and nippers for me. :)