Paddock lick - but where's it gone?

We had to go and get BG another bag of food at the weekend and I also wanted to pick her up some Apple Crunchies. I never used to give her any treats, it’s a bad habit I’ve got into, but she still knows her place and does not nip. Whilst there I also had a look at the paddock licks they had in the shop. I have been ummmming and ahhhing for ages over whether to get her one. As her hooves can get hot on the spring grass the sugars in them probably aren’t the best thing for her, but she does love them and I want to give her something more of interest in her field now she has no companions. P1’s owner put one in the field before and BG loved it, after her breakfast every morning she would go and lick and lick at it.

In the end I thought we’d give it a go. My main concern was that she would like it too much and it would be bad for her, in which case I would need to restrict her access to it. We took it up on Sunday night when it was a little windy, BG has been a bit jumpy in her section of the field recently. She had her tea and I got all the mud off her and then I put the lick down. She gave it one sniff, snorted in horror and flew up the field as fast as her legs would carry her! It smells like molasses to me so not sure why she didn’t like the smell of it. She wasn’t going to come anywhere near it though.

So I went home thinking ‘and we thought she was going to like it too much’ and that maybe she needs another horse to show her this blue box isn’t scary and is actually a tasty treat.

We got up there yesterday morning and she walked down the field to wait for her breakfast, and there she spotted the paddock lick. She was still very nervous of it, edging towards it, then back again, and finally when she dipped her nose in it she did a bit of a bobbing duck impression as if she still wasn’t totally convinced it wasn’t going to bop her on the nose.

I got her food ready and took that over and by then she had figured out it was tasty, I had to put her breakfast right next to her to get her to drag her attention away from the lick. When I left I had to remove the lick from the paddock as I was afraid she’d be there all day licking it other-wise, almost as if she felt duty bound to finish it since it was there. I don’t think she clicked that I had removed it as, as I walked away, she was looking round and round her sniffing the ground and hunting for it.

Last night after her tea we hung her evening hay net up and then put the lick back in the field across the other side so she didn’t see us do it. That way I hoped it would take her a while to find it and we wouldn’t get up there in the morning and find all she had done all night was lick it.

Got up there this morning and she started to move down the field to greet us before suddenly springing into a trot. I think she had only just noticed the lick despite it being there all night. She trotted down to it and her nose went straight in. Again she needed persuading to leave it for her breakfast and she returned straight to it afterwards whilst I poo-picked the field.

I think she feels a bit like she isn’t supposed to have it as she gets very nervous when we go near her as she’s licking it. Almost like she’s trying to hide that she’s having it, she’s not quite sure she’s allowed to.

I removed it again this morning to stop her having too much, I’m hoping eventually I can just leave it in the field and she’ll monitor her own in-take but I don’t want to risk it yet. Having said that I wonder if by removing it she’s going to feel that when it is there she has to have as much as possible.

She didn’t realised I’d taken it again so I left behind a very bewildered BG turning round and round on the spot looking for it.

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.

Going to be lonely

P1 is due to leave the field on Friday and I believe P2 will be leaving in the next few weeks too. Poor BG will be left on her own. I am reasonably lucky that she is an independent little soul and so doesn’t get upset if left on her own, but ideally I would like her to have a field companion. If only I could afford another one…

I am feeling guilty about her being left lonely though. This morning when we left the three of them were grazing side-by-side, often they can be totally different sections of the field to each other so I am sure they are just doing it to make me feel bad. Apparently yesterday the three of them were tearing round the field, wish I’d seen it but I was told ‘she was flying never seen her go so fast!’. BG can run if she wants to and I love to see it, so I’m feeling guilty now she won’t have anyone to play with.

Just hoping we will be allowed to stay on the field, there aren’t many places around here to move to and BG takes so long to settle anywhere new.

On the positive side BG has continued to be good about having her head collar on in the field (so long as food is visible) and letting us catch hold of it again to take it off. P1 did sneak up and try to steal her tea last night after he had been so good recently and left her alone.

A very late and brief update on Christmas.

No Christmas treat for BG this year – I forgot her carrot, but I can’t say that she seemed too upset. Christmas did give me a chance to catch up on all the poo-picking though, now there’s a Christmas treat for me! Luckily it was all frozen, I prefer hacking the muck off the ground to the thick mud we had a few weeks later. There was mud, mud everywhere.

BG had the farrier out over Christmas. As the farrier still hadn’t got their van fixed they turned up with another farrier who was going to trim BG and P2, whilst the normal farrier shod P1. I was a little wary of this, since BG isn’t good with strangers. The first time she met her normal farrier she broke free three times. She was relatively new to the field so still not at home and the farrier did have a scary towel at the time. Despite my worries it went really well, maybe BG prefers male farriers. He made a gentle fuss of her so she got to know him and was very calm around her. She snorted to start with and then just stood as normal. The sides of the crack on her hoof didn’t get smoothed off as much as normal so I will need to keep an eye on that, but despite the trim and hard ground she did not go sore at all afterwards.

We had one shivering incident over the Christmas period on a very wet day, but some hay soon had her steaming and the shivering stopped.

We also acquired a new field companion over the Christmas period, although I haven’t seen them for a few weeks. A black cat could often be found curled up on the hay.

Getting better and better, but I know not to expect it to continue

So BG and the head collar in the field has been going from strength to strength. We haven’t had to use her field shelter again, she is getting more and more confident with having her head collar on in her penned off area, so much so she has stopped pulling back at all and is as good as she normally is in her shelter. We even had a breeze the other night and that didn’t phase her. Okay, it wasn’t full on wind or anything, but every small step counts. When it has been dark she has been continuing just as well too.

This morning she was trying to dip her nose in her food as we walked across the field so I thought ‘okay, I’ll try it her, in the middle of an open field’. She looked for a moment when I put her food down as though she was going to skirt around the edge of the bowl to approach it from the other side and avoid me, but she was actually as good as gold. I left her to eat her food after that, luckily P1 and P2 don’t bother her.

Once she has finished came the difficult part of trying to catch her head collar so I could take it off. I stood a little way away from her and called her to me. She had seen I had put my hand in the treat pocket so came over. I thought she would try to keep her nose on my hand so trying to get round and catch the side of her head collar would scare her into pulling away. No, she was as good as gold. So I got hold of it, gave her a polo to say well done, and took the head collar off.

Now the challenge is to keep this up despite what the weather might throw at us, and to some how keep it going in spring when food is no longer a lure. We’ll see how we get on.

I don’t get to see much of BG in the week due to work and the dark so one day at the weekend we attempt to spend a fair chunk of time with her and give her a thorough groom over. My husband led her round whilst I began the mucking out, and then I set up some poles for her to walk and trot over. She seemed to have more confident over them than in the past. We put out three and raised the middle one a tyres height so she would pick her feet up properly over it. We also tried raising each one at a different end so she would centre herself down the middle of them (she is the queen of avoiding them all if she possibly can).

Then we put out two parallel poles and walked her between them, backing her up as well. Then I got the dreaded mounting block and put that alongside and stood on it as she was led past. There was no pulling back in fear or anything this time, she seemed remarkably calm. Even when I stood up on it as she approached she only tensed but kept walking past and halted alongside.

And in the dark too

I have never attempted to put a head collar on BG in the field in the dark. I will do so in her field shelter by torch light, but considering how funny she is outside anyway, I didn’t think having head collar straps flying round her head when she couldn’t see them would do any good at all. After yesterday morning’s success though I did attempt it in the evening.

I led her into her pen and my husband held the torch. I went to hold the head collar out for her only to find her head was already in the food bowl having her first mouthful. She is normally quite patient and waits until I hold her head collar out and puts it on until she starts eating, but when it is dark I have always just put her food bowl down and let her eat in the field, so I can’t blame her for being eager.

I showed her the head collar and she stole another mouthful of food before she realised what I was asking. By this time I was thinking ‘oh no, she’ll have a strop because she has already had food and she’ll get upset I interrupted her with the scary head collar and holding it at eye level’…but she didn’t. It took her five attempts of dipping her nose in and out of the head collar and a bit of pulling back from me before she let me put it on properly, but she let me do it! I was so impressed with her. It sounds silly, most people expect to be able to catch their horses, but for BG and me these little hurdles (changes to normal routine) are a big achievement.

This morning she was good again. It does make me wonder a little if she is very hungry, the fact she is being so good to get her food, but she has plenty of covering on her.

She was a little timid this morning around us, I’m not sure why but she was being very careful; inquisitive but tentative. She is a beautiful pony.

Typical

So I am very out of date, I have a half written update of BG over Christmas time that I will have to post at a later date.

The general update is that BG is doing well. It hasn’t been as cold as I had thought it would be, so they are only getting hay in the evenings at the moment. It is very, very wet instead and BG can normally be found covered in mud and with a wet belly where she’s been lying down. No recent shivering incidents though, in fact one morning I got worried because I think she was over-heating in her big woolly coat, but I think they had all been running round just before I got there.

Because of all the rain the field is just puddle after puddle, and the entrance to the field shelter is the biggest puddle of all, I’ve lost my welly in the mud there once. P2 was being kept in at night and when we opened the door in the morning to come out he would just stand there and survey the mud, not quite knowing whether to risk it or not. On the mornings he did leave the shelter reasonably quickly we put BG in there for her breakfast, so we could put the head collar on her. She had recently become very tentative about walking through the boggy entrance, and would take a while walking around it to find the best way in and out. Last night she was very particular about finding the right route and at one point looked like she might even forgo her food to avoid the mud.

So we have eventually penned off a bit in the field to feed her in there, hopefully it will help the entrance recover as well. The reason we need to pen it off is not to stop P1 or P2 trying to eat her food as they are both very good, but so that BG doesn’t run off immediately after eating. Plus, I want to be able to put her head collar on in there. That isn’t the biggest problem though, if I succeed it getting it on her catching her again to take it off is the bit that really upsets her if she can escape to the rest of the field instead.

This morning was the first morning we used the pen. I thought, if she refuses to have her head collar on then I would take her food into the shelter instead and catch her in there. I don’t have time before work to put up with her stubbornness in the field.

So I got her breakfast ready and walked across the field and what did she do? Walked straight in to the field shelter no hesitation! Then she had the cheek to look out the door at me as if to say ‘I’m here, what are you doing’ as I walked around the side of the shelter to her new pen.

Luckily she picked up what was going on quite quickly and followed me round, and wasn’t even worried about the electric tape that was the sides of the pen. I held out her head collar and she popped her nose in then pulled back out of it. Try again, second time perfect! So that went a lot better than I thought it would. She even stood patiently whilst I moved the strap up over her neck so I could buckle it on a higher setting.

I think it helped that she was feeling very hungry this morning. As I walked across the field with her food initially she was almost running rings in front of me trying to dip her nose in the corner of the bowl as I carried it.