The last couple of weeks

So a lot has happened in the last couple of weeks. P1 left not last Friday but the Friday before and P2 left last Wednesday. BG is now on her own and I am feeling very sorry for her. The day P2 went we got up there in the evening to hear a loud neigh as we got out the car. She isn’t very vocal normally, and hasn’t been since, but it did make me feel she must be happy to see company. The funny thing is BG has such a deep neigh, you wouldn’t think she was a mare.

She seems to be reasonably happy on her own though, although obviously company would be preferable, I am hoping someone else might join us on the field. After P1 left P2 would follow me round the field as I mucked out with his nose on my leg – so I think he felt more abandoned than BG.

BG continued to be reasonably good with her head collar, except the night my husband put up the electric fencing so she could see him doing that faintly in the distance. A couple of times she has even let us put her head collar on her before I’ve got her food ready and every time she has been good about letting me catch her to take it back off.

The Sunday before last I spent a good couple of hours up with her. She had her breakfast first and then I took her in the field shelter to give her a thorough groom. She went and hid in the back, no idea why but she just didn’t want a groom that morning so I had to tie her up to groom her.

I also gave her a lunge but she wasn’t overly enthusiastic. I put out some poles as that normally perks her up but it didn’t really seem to do the trick.

My husband and I had put up electric fencing down the field ready for when P2 went so we can move BG onto a smaller section and rest the rest of the field. I was feeling reasonably confident about this until last Tuesday, since she had been so good with her head collar, but that day she wasn’t having it on.

She came running down when she saw us arrive and then she tried a couple of times to have her head collar on but each time just wasn’t quite confident enough. I popped her in the field shelter in the end and she had it on there first time, may be it was just the bitterly cold wind that morning. The reason I resorted to the shelter so quickly was I also had to give her her wormer that morning before work.

She didn’t want her wormer – I don’t blame her. I got my husband to hold her and try and use his body presence to block her in the corner, but even then we managed to do a full circuit of the field shelter some how with her throwing her head up in the air, I had a sore upper arm for the next couple of days from trying to hold her head still. She doesn’t help herself though, since she was being silly half the wormer ended up on the outside of the syringe so I had to give her slightly more to make sure she had it. She kept trying to snuggle up to my husbands shoulder too so I couldn’t reach her mouth. He went to work with wormer and slobber down his coat!

Luckily she has still never attempted to spit it out afterwards, and this time she even accepted a well done minty treat quite soon after without turning her nose up at it.

So P2 went the day after that and on Thursday morning we moved BG over to her fenced off area. She did let us put the head collar on over there, but then the wind really got up for quite a few days so we didn’t stand a chance. A couple of nights we let her back on the whole field so she would have access to her field shelter as the wind was so strong the hedge only did a half hearted job of blocking it.

We were determined to spend a fair chunk of time with her at the weekend to give her some interaction and stop her getting bored, but the wind limited what we could do. We caught her in her field shelter both mornings. Saturday my husband did some in-hand work with her (with her running round him because of the wind) and Sunday I was going to. After she had her breakfast though she decided she didn’t want to talk to me and hid in the back of her field shelter, swinging her bottom on me whenever I tried to approach her. It gave me a chance to catch up on the mucking out and tidying up.

When I did eventually get hold of her head collar and turn her out in her section of the field she went straight off to graze so at least I didn’t feel guilty like I do most mornings when she hangs around looking for treats.

Last night the wind finally died down, it felt so eerie up there. We tried the head collar in the field and poor BG did try several times but just couldn’t get her confidence up to put her nose all the way in. Eventually we resorted to the shelter again, at least that way she still has her food but has the head collar on first. This morning was all frosty and we tried again, but no luck in the field. We opened the fence to let her through to her shelter and you could tell she was hungry – she cantered across to her shelter. In there the head collar goes on first time without a fuss, it makes you wonder what makes it so scary outside.

She had a slight bit of dried on blood on her nose so we think she must have scratched herself on a bush, it all looked clean though. She also got spoilt with some hay this morning (she is still getting a net at night) since the ground was frozen.