By: Admin
It is now December 16 and all is well other than my own shaken nerves. I was anxious to get much better acquainted with Velvet and have her feel comfortable enough with me to play. Today this happened. Right now it is windy and snowy and I knew she had nothing better to do outside than look around, so I took advantage of the situation and went out in the pasture and called her to me. She came to me, this is the first time she has come only when called with no other intentions in her head, such as food. Once she came to me she got excited and bucked, then she went running to the barn to chase the goats outside. She has been seen doing this on occasion, when she is the only one outside, she will go into the barn and run the goats out with her and attempt to play with them. Today after she ran the goats out Sunny, my largest goat came directly to me. She came running out and bucked near us in passing and ran around the field once and then headed back to the barn. Once she got there she took off again on her way out to Sunny and I and half way out she hit some mud and then it happened. I saw Velvet's hind end drop and she went down. I held my breath and my position waiting to see if she jumped up as quickly as she had fallen without injury. She was down for less than a second, although it seemed like a lifetime and suddenly leaped up and ran to Sunny and I. She seemed fine and I did a quick check of her legs while she was standing there and then we all walked back to the barn. Once inside I checked her more closely. All seemed well. I checked her again tonight twice and she does not appear to have any problems so far. I will watch her closely for injury over the next few days in case she is stiff or twisted her hips, but nothing appears to be broken or sore to this point. What a relief. I have heard of several young horses in the past that have fallen in play and broken a hip, I am just so very happy this did not happen to her.
It has now been two days and Velvet is fine. She is feeling her oats, so they say. We did have an exciting event tonight. Velvet is finally acting like the untamed foal she was supposed to be. She came from a herd environment and had absolutely no handling, but she did not act like it. She was very skinny and undernourished when she arrived. My conclusion is that up until now she was still having a lot to recover from and is finally feeling normal. Some people might not consider this normal, but to me it is normal. Our exciting event started at feeding time. I walked outside the barn with her food and she swung her head around and threatened to bite me. I gave her a swat on the neck and firmly said no. Since we were in an icy area I carried the food to more solid ground calling her behind me. At this point she got rambunctious and almost ran me over. I had my glove off and immediately swatted her with the glove and said no again, but she did not seem to understand, instead she continued the "foalish" attack for food. She needs to be corrected in order to learn good behavior. I quickly thought of another tactic. I stepped forward, threw up one hand and said “whoa!”. Instantaneously she stopped and settled. I immediately praised her and she began eating. We had been practicing whoa from day 1, so she was able to understand and all is well. So far we only had to practice “No!” about two times, not enough to fully understand. Honestly, in retrospect I feel much better knowing that she is acting normal, however, others may not understand and feel as though they have adopted a crazy horse. She was never handled by humans so she does not know one thing about human rules nor does she know she could easily hurt a human with her size and baby teeth. Finally, I feel comfortable training her, now she is ready. Secretly, I had been feeling bad doing much with her, because she just did not seem quite right and seeing how skinny she was, I always felt guilty. Some time has passed and she is developing some meat on her bones and is now feeling at home. This is the perfect time to start some real training!
I have created a blog: http://ehorseplace.blogspot.com/ in order to free up the website for other informative horse articles, so all regular updates regarding Velvet will appear in my blog. I will continue to reference her training and care in articles on this site in the future. Please visit my blog for upcoming photos of Velvet.
