Caught her!

I am pleased to say BG is walking so much better now, although you can still tell she is sore on her near-fore. That was this morning though, so we will see what she is like tonight as she tends to be slightly worse in the evening.

The weather is hot, dry and sunny again, meaning BG is reluctant to leave her grass and come in again. The sore hooves can’t be helping either, the ground around her field shelter is bare so harder for her than the grass in the field. Normally with a bit of prompting (put her food bowl on the grass a couple of metres ahead of her and move it towards her shelter as she walks forwards, giving her a treat every so often to let her know she is doing the right thing) she will make it down. This morning we did just that, but last night she wasn’t even tempted with that.

So I thought, I am going to catch her in the field tonight, she will have to fight to avoid this. Attached her lead rope around my waist and carried her head collar up to her, one look at it and she started to walk away. Whenever I went near her she moved away, so I just followed her…for fourty minutes. Occasionally she would stop, and turn her head towards me, even sniffing her head collar, but moving away if it went near her nose too far. Then we would move off again, with me following her.

I thought I’d herd her down towards her shelter at the same time, so I was going from side to side, keeping an eye on her hind legs as I went behind them. She ‘escaped’ from me a couple of times, trotting past me up the field. So I would follow her up and we would start again.

Eventually she stood to let me put the head collar on! And she didn’t even pull away as the strap went up and over her head.

Admittedly, I was only able to do this as she is lame (and I did feel a bit mean making her move so much on a sore hoof). A not lame BG means she can outrun me every time and I wouldn’t stand a chance, but maybe she’ll remember this time and learn that she can’t escape by avoiding me. We’ll have to see if she is any better tonight. It would be bliss to have a horse you can catch in the field.