It's a trick!

Yesterday we went to stock up on food for BG, another bag of treats and also to get her another water bucket. She has one in the field, but that seems to be being used a lot by the birds at the moment and gets mucky so quickly. I thought it would be nice to add one in her shelter too; one which would probably stay cleaner and cooler. That way both could be kept half full, so I waste less water when I tip them out to clean them.

There is no water up the field so we have to take it all from home. We have two ten litre containers we use and luckily BG doesn't drink a lot so we can cope with that, but it does mean I don't like to waste too much.

So last night we took the new water bucket up, put it in the back of her shelter (in 'her' corner which she likes to hide in) and topped it up. Cue snorting from BG who was eating her tea, and then it seemed to upset her the rest of the time we were up there. It is only a new bucket!

She gave it a sniff which I thought was brave of her, but that was it. She was a pain to catch hold of once she had eaten, she was very jumpy as we tended to her. My husband led her round to show her the new bucket and she leaned away from it as if he was introducing her to something that would leap up and attack her at any minute.

Once we let her out she would then not come back in the shelter, even when tempted. I don't know what she thought the bucket would do to her but she seemed to think we were tricking her into something! Luckily this morning she came in as good as gold, snorted a bit when her head collar went on, but otherwise ignored the bucket.

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This morning I spent a nice chunk of time up the field with BG. I gave her a thorough groom, although she is looking a little odd at the moment which a groom just seems to highlight. Where her winter coat still hasn't come out she is looking almost black. On the insides of all four of her legs it looks like I have attacked her with a shaver and not done a very good job. The winter coat is black, the summer coat a light yellowy almost, the contrast looks very strange. Her bottom looks mottled where she has lost some winter coat but not all of it. It's just a funny time of year for her on looks.

After her groom I gave her a lunge. Last time I got her going round the obstacles on her 'bad' rein with the whip re-introduced and got a trot out of her without her playing up. This time I went straight to lunge her on her 'bad' rein without the obstacles. She tried to turn round initially but with a bit of coaxing then corrected herself and lunged on her bad rein again. Phew, hopefully that is that silly phase over with for the moment.

One reason I really wanted to lunge BG was because she has been on some new grass. She was meant to move from the far section of the field to the mid section at the start of May, but she is doing plenty well enough size wise, and I really didn't want to risk putting her on all that fresh grass. So instead we started to move the fence posts out a little on the middle section so she had a little bit new each day. She does now expect this, and stands there looking most hard-done by if we don't move the fence out. Rather than do bit-by-bit we decided the other day to give her a bigger section of the new grass and so not have to do it every day. She's definitely enjoying the new grass, but still seems to expect more every day.

We will keep pushing the mid-section out a couple of metres at a time and will fence off half of the far section. Hopefully we will soon have four summer sections, and the final third of the field we will leave resting for winter.