In spite of my woefully over full to do list for a day when I should be resting and trying to recover from this craptastic bout of bronchitis, there were a couple of lovely horse moments I wanted to share with you. The first came earlier in the day when I stepped out to feed my little banty hen and check up on the poultry and see if we had any eggs.
Holly, my kill pen rescue mare I’ve written about, was munching on hay in the run in shed by herself. I grabbed some treats and slipped through the gate. Immediately she turned toward me (already a win) and started walking toward me. Joy!
You see, Holly is still, even after two years, incredibly distrustful of anything resembling “going to work”. For her to walk toward me has become a major win. I fed her a treat, talked to her, petted her, and started to work along her side (she has a scratch that’s healed probably from leaning against the fence or a tree branch) she started walking away. I stayed with her, and she soon realized I wanted nothing more than to gently touch her thick winter coat, and she stopped. Until Thunder showed up because he’s right there if he thinks he’s getting treats and she’s low on the herd hierarchy.
But this? Getting her to turn and come toward me? A huge huge win, and I felt incredibly special and lucky. And yes, Mr. Thunder and his daughter Firefly got treats. (Fortune was enjoying the glorious day a little distance away and happy to do so unbothered.)
The second horse win? That afternoon when the hay delivery came. Now, as of right now I have as many bales of hay as I had last year, so I’m good. I also have enough because my trip to Iowa didn’t cost as much as I thought, to get one, final load, which I’ll do next weekend if the weather is good. I’m feeding hay a few weeks earlier than I did last year thanks to our strange weather and who knows what’s going to happen in January or February.
But we’re supposed to have a big temperature drop tomorrow and the bale I’d fed the horses (the last one from last winter) was nearly gone, so I rolled one of the newly delivered bales (with the help of my husband) into the run-in shed. And there, as soon as I was done, there were horses standing around it with the happy munch munch sound they make when eating hay. Happy contented horses = happy zen me.
Pure bliss.
