Together at last (2)!

 

Cody trots to catch up with Catlow, who moved down the valley to graze.

After separating Stormy out, Chico hurries to catch up with Cody and Catlow.

Stormy makes it back down to the others after I shoo her away, and Chico right away sets in to chase her.  She's not to happy about it...with a swish of her tail.

All the activity gets Catlow riled up too, so she launches into a gallop!  If Catlow is going to run, the whole herd will run!  I love the power in Catlow's launch!

They are all feeling a little sassy!  Well, Catlow and Cody are...I think Stormy is just trying to stay out of Chico's way!

 

 Catlow is really digging in!



Sassy!

My dogs think they should chase the horses as the horses run past and my poor cruciate ligament tear/repair dog, Jasper, trips himself up in the grass and goes head over heals!

Don't worry, Jasper is okay.  It just hurts to see him so debilitated.  I'm pretty sure catching Lyme disease set off his cranial cruciate ligament tears.

The horses get separated.  Stormy ran into the lower pasture and whinnies pitifully to her separated friends.

So they all head down to be together.

Once together, they are still riled up!  I love the tails in the air!

 

 Then they settle down, with Chico and Cody standing side by side, like they used to.  Stormy looks on like she'd really like to be next to her Cody.



I do think that Cody missed Chico.  She touches him affectionately here.

Stormy decides she's had enough of them for awhile and trots up to visit me again.  Sure, maybe she thinks I'll feed her, but she really does seem to be bonding to me!  Every time I come outside, she looks up and stares at me with this penetrating look.  None of my other horses do that!  Griffin used to always notice me and acknowledge me too.

Together at last!

This will be a two parter, just because I have lots of photos to share.

And because I know that it is probably hard to tell all my dark horses apart , especially since they all get darker when their winter coats come in, I'll describe them all quick before we get into it.  Catlow is the easy one...she is the sorrel with the big blaze face.  Then Stormy is the only other horse with any white - she is dark brown (seal brown) with a small crescent on her forehead, a snip, and a white right rear pastern.  Stormy has the darkest coat color and true black mane and tail.  Cody is very similar in color to Stormy except she is more of a smokey color (due to the cream gene on seal brown) and her mane and tail are very dark chocolate.  She is also bigger than Stormy and has no white.  And Chico is the simple bay with no white.  He is actually a little bit of a sooty bay, but compared to the others, he is quite light.

Chico's wound is really healing nicely.  It's hardly even thickened around the fetlock anymore.  It has a nice scab over the ever-shrinking granulation tissue.  I'm so pleased at the stage it's at.

 

So I decided to turn the horses back out together.  It's easier to manage them when they are together.  As it was, the two out in the big pasture weren't getting any mineral because the mineral feeder is in the barn.

 

I knew there would be drama, and of course there was, but not nearly as much as there was the first time I turned Chico out with them all.  That time he was also full of energy from being cooped up in the barn.  This time it was much less excitement, but still a lot to see in the herd interactions.

 

Stormy has this disgusting habit of peeing at horses when she is kicking at them.  I thinks it's a bit of submission thing, but she also tends to show extremely strong heats, especially to horses she hasn't been with.

 

Here she is kicking at Chico and peeing at him at the same time, as he threatens to kick her.

 

Chico tries to go down and chase after Stormy, again, but Cody (dark chocolate colored horse) steps in front of him and cuts him off, threatening to kick him.  Remember, Chico and Cody are usually best buds.

 

 

I love Cody's face in this and Chico's reaction.  She is clearly telling him to back off. 

 

And he does.  Cody is the boss mare afterall.  He behaves himself for a few minutes, following Cody apologetically.  This picture is good for showing the colors of the "dark" horses.  Stormy is furthest in the background here, then Cody (you can really see her smokiness), then Chico last.

 

But that doesn't last long.  He's back to chasing Stormy again.

 

He tries to keep her on the outside of his herd, while Cody looks on with a watchful eye.  Catlow couldn't care less what was happening.  She was just happy to be out in the big pasture grazing (she was the one in with Chico in the little pasture).

 

Chico succeeds in isolating Stormy and she looks at me hoping I might save her.

 

Chico takes off at a strong trot to catch up with Cody and Catlow.  You can see his leg really doesn't hinder him much at all!  I'm so excited that I might actually have my riding gelding back when he's all healed up from this.  I don't think this ruined him!

 

 He's catching air here.  Someone said that he probably is okay because mustangs are tougher than other horses.  I sort of had to giggle at that because really, Chico was just one lucky horse.  Lucky that he happened to miss all those important tendons, joints, and everything else down there!  And I like to think he had good care.  Without all the bandaging, he certainly wouldn't have had this good of a cosmetic effect, and it may have scarred bad enough to hinder motion in his fetlock.

 

After Chico isolated Stormy, she came right over to hang out with me.  She just stood next to me and walked beside me in the pasture as though I was leading her.  I finally shoo'd her away telling her to go interact with the others, and as she left, she stopped and looked back at me with this expression "Do I really have to?"

 

I'm really becoming quite attached to the newest member of my herd.

Unexpected herd behavior

I played with Chico a lot today since he's so bored locked in the barn.  He got to graze in the yard and I took more pictures of his wound.  I'm pretty disappointed in how slowly it is healing.  Here is a picture from the 29th (+ 27 days).  I'm consulting with the vets at school about further things to do.

 

This picture and the following one show how much the bottom part of the wound moves.  This is the part with the deepest cleft where I worry that there is something in there preventing closure (more serious issue that is causing drainage).

Because Chico needed a new round bale moved into the barn where he's being kept, and he has been so bored, and I was also a little frustrated wondering how much longer I was going to have to keep him confined, I decided to let him out into the pasture and see how he did.

I was hoping he'd take it easy and just mosey around eating grass, but of course that is not what happened.  He hasn't been in with Stormy yet.  The day she arrived was the day I noticed his big wound. 

Now, Stormy settled in with just the mares really well.  There was only a little bit of violence and that was almost always centered around them getting some pellets during Chico's medicine feedings so they didn't all feel left out.  Stormy is a little pushy around feed and so would get in Cody's face and that's never a good thing to do when there is food involved.  Cody would kick her a few times and they'd be back to being friends.  Cody even lets Stormy snag feed from her bucket as long as she doesn't want her head in the bucket at that moment.  Catlow too showed Stormy that she is the boss.  She often turns her butt to her to threaten with kicks and Stormy gets out of her way quickly, but Catlow rarely actually kicks her.

Out in the pasture, the three mares are almost inseparable.  And interestingly, I often see Cody and Stormy grazing more closely together now than Catlow and Cody (though Catlow is usually the outsider and watch mare in any herd). 

Now, throw Chico into the mix.  He seemed to ignore Stormy at first.  He has of course met her before on rides and for the last several weeks has gotten to know her over a gate.  Once he was settled into the fact that he was back with his herd, he had to immediately show Stormy who was the number 2 horse in this herd and remind her that she will in no uncertain terms be the bottom!  He was very aggressive about it, much to my dismay after hoping that he wouldn't race around on his wounded leg.  He walks with no limp, but trotting, I can see that he is off a bit.  However, he will race around at a canter and gallop with no worries.

At one point, Cody trotted into the round pen (I've left the gate open from the pasture side into the round pen so they can keep the grass grazed down and play in the sand since it is not being used much this year).  Stormy followed Cody, and when Chico saw Stormy following her in, he raced in there to get after her.  That was when I saw the most amazing thing.

As Chico would get after Stormy, Cody would get very aggressive and get after Chico.  So it was really mass confusion as Chico was trying to be all aggressive toward Stormy and stay out of Cody's way.  They all left the round pen and moved out into the big pasture.  There, the same sequence of events was repeated.  Chico would aggressively chase Stormy to bite her on the butt, and Stormy would double barrel kick at him with her heels high in the sky and run away as fast as she could.  Then Cody would run in and bite Chico and spin to threaten to kick at him.  In between attacks, Cody would stand sort of all puffed up and calm.  Stormy very quickly realized that Cody was protecting her and would try to keep Cody between herself and Chico at all times.

I was really just floored.  I never would have expected that kind of behavior from them.  Cody was so obviously protecting Stormy and telling Chico to knock it off with his behavior.  Catlow through all this seemed to get after Stormy a little more than usual but not really aggressively.  I think that Chico was very confused at first.  Here he thought he was chasing this new mare away from his main companion (Cody and Chico are usually the inseparable ones in the pasture), while Cody was telling him that Stormy was not to be treated like that and was Cody's new companion too.  In between attacks, Cody would graze head to head with Chico, but she absolutely would not tolerate his behavior toward Stormy. 

Poor Stormy was pretty confused.  She wanted to be near Cody, but being near Cody is what set Chico off in his aggression toward her.  Cody was her protector, but she couldn't prevent the attacks all together.  For part of the time, Stormy just stood on the outside of the group to stay out of Chico's way. 

Shortly after this, we got the new round bale in the barn and I put Chico away.  He really doesn't need to be running like that while we are trying to treat him and his wound.  I'm sure with more time, they'd sort it out completely, but they really didn't have the time to.  Next time I'll be ready with my camera to document this amazing behavior among my new herd!

More herd watching

Once again, Chico is the first (only) horse that comes to investigate me as I wander about the pasture.

He sure does have some wonderfully expressive soft eyes.  I love this horse with all my heart, even when he's naughty and rambunctious.  Usually he's a pretty darn good horse.  My only concern with him is the tripping he occasionally does on his hind foot.  He sometimes catches his toe as he's walking and stumbles.  I worried that he might catch it wrong someday and really seriously injure it.  As is now, I think it is just stiff, but I'm planning to do some more entensive lameness evaluation in him as I learn how in school.

 I love the backlighting in the following photos.

Herd watching

I took a walk in the pasture with my dogs and cat the other day.  The winter sunlight is great for photos with its constant low angle in the sky.  This was shortly after noon.  The horses of course saw me and were interested, then they heard the crunching of the dogs and cat in the woods behind me and were even more interested.

 

 

Kachina especially was all riled up about the critters in the woods.

 

The others just herded up, deciding whether or not to come investigate.

Catlow finally decided she needed to check things out, so she strided right out confidently, quickly passing Kachina (who is too chicken to actually check things out on her own).

My gorgous Catlow broke into a trot...

Then into a canter as she came up the hill.

She passed me right by to get to where she could hear the cat creeping through the trees.

The rest of the herd followed rather calmly.

Boss mare Cody wasn't about to be left behind.

 Kachina was still all kinds of riled up by the situation...she usually is.

Once they all made it to the top of the hill and were satisfied with the identity of the pasture invaders, then Chico decided I was finally interesting and was the first to come and greet me.

Griffin decided maybe he should chase the cat.  I know he would stomp and kill one if given the right opportunity.  He'd do it to my dogs too.  Most of the time he tolerates the presence of other critters in his pasture, but he does chase them too.  I don't really need to worry about predators with him around.  I wonder what he'd do to our cows...probably run them and be very mean to them.  I've seen my horses chase deer and foxes out of the pasture before.

Catlow is one of those horses who just has a gentle soul through and through.  She never chases other animals (she does assert her authority over Griffin and Kachina though, but not in a nasty way...only when needed).

My trusty companions...

 

Sometimes its nice to just go out in the pasture and for a walk in the woods with no particular agenda at all.  I love my horses, but it is also nice to just be able to be out there and watch them without really interacting with them at all.  Lately, I've been riding some (bareback when I do), but mostly just spending time with them near their hay...brushing and picking out hooves.  Catlow, normally a standoff-ish horse, is all over me when I'm out there just to love on them. 



Something interesting in the trail?