New Friends

Stitch spent the first five days of living at the new place feeling pretty sad and sorry for himself in his quarantine pen. There are horses in paddocks on two side of his pen, but they are separated by a road so obviously not able to be in contact with.

He was bored and lonely. And it was far too cold for me to be able to spend much time with him when I came out in the evenings. The first night was -31C, the second -17 plus a windchill. It warmed up to a balmy -14C on his last night in there so I was able to spend a whole 45 minutes doing things with him, mostly involving shoving cookies in his mouth. He thought that was the best time ever. 

A very frosty pony.

On Monday afternoon he was declared cootie free and able to leave his jail cell. I was off work early that day, so I rushed out to the barn mid-afternoon in the hopes that I could turn him out into the pasture and have him meet his new friends while there was still some daylight. 

It started out ok - it's a decent walk from his quarantine pen on one side of the property to the pasture on the other side. Stitch walked nicely next to me, taking his new surroundings in. 

When we got to the pasture I saw that someone was out there trying to catch a horse that didn't want to be caught. I thought it would be very mean to that person to add a new horse to the mix, so we were just going to wait at the gate until the horse was caught before turning Stitch out. 

And then Stitch showed his true colours. My quiet, well-mannered 3 year old is really a baby dragon horse in disguise.

While we were waiting to go into the pasture, the horses in the surrounding pens started to get a little silly. Between the new horse and the uncatchable one, they had plenty of reasons to start getting prancy. 

I think Stitch could have managed that okay, but what did him in was the horses that got prancy behind the row of parked trailers that lined the road to the pasture. Once the first horse suddenly pranced into view in between the trailers, Stitch had feelings.

I'll give him full credit for keeping his front feet on the ground, though there were a few times he was definitely thinking about getting light in front. His go-to move was to bulge his left shoulder into me and try to scoot off, which we had a few discussions about. It's real fun having those discussions on a packed snowy road that you have no traction on!

There were so many snorts. The "oh, this is where I die" types of snorts. So,so many.

But, we got through it without me getting jumped on. The horse got caught, the silly horses got bored, and Stitch finally got to go out to meet his new friends. 

The field is all geldings, and they were a mix of "yay someone new!" and "is there something going on I should leave the hay for?". Stitch quickly figured out who wanted their own personal space (only one gelding), and within an hour of being out I saw him playing a tentative game of bitey face with someone. When I went out the next morning he was sharing one of the round bales with someone, so he seems to be well on his way to finding his place in the group.

And most importantly - there is only one new hole in his blanket that I have to repair.