Ariel's here :)
So Ariel arrived in Alberta Saturday afternoon - a good week and a half after leaving New Brunswick, but in suprisingly good shape! I was losing sleep over the whole thing, thinking she was going to be traumatized with such a long trip, worrying about colic, wondering if the people who moved her had any clue what they were doing (I generally don't see eye to eye with old farm men on how my horse is to be cared for, lol) - but she was fine. She lost a fair bit of weight on the trip (but she was HUGE, so I don't think it hurt her too much!) and she has a scratch above her right eye from rubbing in the trailer, but other than that, she's fine!
We had to unload her about a 15 minute walk from the place she's actually staying, because she came on a massive truck - she was really good though, not skittish at all. I put a chain over her nose just in case, and Nathan had a lead rope on the other side, and we walked her in the ditch, but she didn't care about the cars at all. She was more interested in eating. Typical paint ...
So yeah. She was out in her own pen for awhile, but when Ralph (owner of the acreage she's living at) moved his horses out of sight she started tearing around her pasture, contemplating jumping the fence, so he moved her to a pen next to his horses - and she backed up to the fence and started booting them! They've got 2 Belgians (one of them is a giant, I've never seen a hrose that huge in my life!), a mini, a yearling paint, and 2 other horses - and Ariel was laying it to the big guys ... yeesh. So he figured she could hold her own with them, so he let her out into their pasture. She's got a huge hoofprint on her bum (apparently she tried to challenge the giant horse right off the bat) but when we were there last night things seemed to have settled down. She's hanging out with Bella, the smaller Belgian, who is also new, and avoiding everyone else. At least she's got one friend :)
I'm SO excited to finally have her here!!!! It's about flipping time ...
We had to unload her about a 15 minute walk from the place she's actually staying, because she came on a massive truck - she was really good though, not skittish at all. I put a chain over her nose just in case, and Nathan had a lead rope on the other side, and we walked her in the ditch, but she didn't care about the cars at all. She was more interested in eating. Typical paint ...
So yeah. She was out in her own pen for awhile, but when Ralph (owner of the acreage she's living at) moved his horses out of sight she started tearing around her pasture, contemplating jumping the fence, so he moved her to a pen next to his horses - and she backed up to the fence and started booting them! They've got 2 Belgians (one of them is a giant, I've never seen a hrose that huge in my life!), a mini, a yearling paint, and 2 other horses - and Ariel was laying it to the big guys ... yeesh. So he figured she could hold her own with them, so he let her out into their pasture. She's got a huge hoofprint on her bum (apparently she tried to challenge the giant horse right off the bat) but when we were there last night things seemed to have settled down. She's hanging out with Bella, the smaller Belgian, who is also new, and avoiding everyone else. At least she's got one friend :)
I'm SO excited to finally have her here!!!! It's about flipping time ...