Sunday, July 9, 2017

Hoof trims for Tess and Fifi's freedom

The bay roan filly's name is Tess.  She is doing great at my friends.  She has a completely different temperatment than Fifi though.  She is a bit flighty, less trusting of people, and more attached to my friend's other horses.  So much so that she actually ran into and bent a panel one day when the horses took off with exuberance for the pasture.  Even so, she is leading in the round pen, picking up all her feet, totally desensitized to the flag and ropes.  She's doing great.  Today I trimmed her feet and she also was led outside her round pen for the first time.


She also just would rather be left alone and seems to just be tolerating us (as compared to Fifi who is really getting attached to me).  She didn't really enjoy me hugging her as you can see in her face!

 I worked with Fifi in the round pen today, just getting her freed up and trotting out.  She was wonderful in the round pen.  Moved right out and turned in to me when I stepped in front of her drive line and asked for whoa.  It didn't take long at all to feel satisfied with her round penning skills.  Then I led her around the fence line and let her out into the pasture!

 I turned her out with Shimmer, Charlie and Catlow.  The others get too aggressive with new horses and Denny is interested in her because she's showing heat to him.  I don't want her bred!

Fifi had a great first afternoon in the pasture.  She didn't really care what the other horses were up to and followed me around.  She did test the fence and got a shock, so that was good.  I could walk up and halter her anytime without her thinking she wanted to leave me.  In fact, she'd approach me as I got close to her asking for me to rub her on the withers.  Apparently she's itchy.  She's now spending the night in the stall, but she'll go back out with the same horses tomorrow.  Then maybe after that I'll start adding horses back in so the whole herd can be together again.

Someone asked what made us choose these two.  Well, the bay roan was first pick because of her conformation.  It's hard to get a feel for what kind of a connection you might have with a horse in the pens duiring an adoption event.  The horses are stressed, ignoring the people gawking at them, and just eating hay and trying to pretend they aren't getting stared at.  And honestly, the sorrel filly was just an afterthought because we could adopt a buddy horse for $25.  She was one of the few left, and I am not crazy about her conformation, however, her temperament and sweet sweet nature totally make up for her looks!

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