Whirlwind

Thanks for your feedback on my last post! I did change the title of my blog - I think that The Repurposed Horse fits nicely.  (:

The last few days have been pretty crazy.

Tiny feed room!

Because I wanted to move Spring as quickly as possible, I spent a large part of the day on Monday running around to various farm supply stores, Wal-Mart, and Lowes, trying to purchase all of the things that our little farm needed for Leo to come home.  I texted a friend of mine, K, about hauling for me - it's summer camp season, so the usual people that I'd ask to haul are a little busy during the daytime, dealing with hundreds of twenty or so small children.  K was able to haul on Tuesday, which was also supposed to be my first day cleaning stalls post-surgery.  The schedule was a little tight for me, but Barn BFF S agreed to meet me at the barn much earlier than usual in order to get stalls done on time.  The plan was for me to meet K at her barn, drive to the barn that Spring was at (conveniently located ~5 miles from CEC), pick her up, haul to CEC, drop her off, load Leo, drive the ~20 minutes to my house, drop him off, then go our separate ways.  Whew.

forever my favorite picture of Spring

Surprisingly enough, that plan was pulled off without much fuss.  After finishing stalls, I found myself with about an hour to kill before I needed to leave to meet K.  S decided to come along for the first part of the ride - she wanted to meet Spring - and we ended up hanging out at the barn until it was time to go.  K was hooking the trailer up when we arrived, and we decided that it would work best for us to travel in two separate vehicles.  Once the trailer was on, we were good to go, and we headed out to pick up Spring!  There was a bit of confusion with road names and directions, and we got separated on the highway, but despite taking two different routes we actually ended up at the barn at almost exactly the same time.  J met us there and we exchanged some paperwork, she gave Spring a hug goodbye, and S and I walked her up to the trailer to get the moving party started.  The mare loaded without much fuss, and we were soon on our way to CEC.

low quality picture, high quality face

It was a hot, muggy day, and despite the quick trip, Spring was a little warm when we arrived at CEC.  S volunteered to walk her while I got Leo ready to go, and stayed behind to keep an eye on her so that K and I could keep moving.  Leo loaded like a champ (so proud of him!) and we headed out.  K and I got separated in traffic again, but I caught up to her on the highway and was able to get in front of her again so that she could follow me down the country road that leads to my house.  

Leo and his new groupies

As the trailer pulled into the driveway, the neighbor horses began whinnying, the ponies began whinnying, and Leo got a little excited.  Still, he unloaded well, and was surprisingly calm for being in a new place.  I walked him around a little bit and let him sniff the ponies over the fence - they were pretty much instantly in love.  We decided to turn him out with them and watch - there hadn't been any squealing, and I was concerned that putting him somewhere on his own would only stress him out.  I led him over to him and there was more sniffing, but nothing aggressive or concerning, so I pulled the halter off and let him go.  And...it was adorable.  The ponies followed him all over - not in a chasing way, but in a "let me please put my face on your face and be your best friend" kind of way.  Leo trotted a few laps, inspecting his new digs, and looked 100% sound the entire time because horses are, if nothing else, inconvenient assholes  ridiculous. 

instant besties

Once it was clear that everything was okay, K said her goodbyes.  I hung out for a while, reveling in the fact that my horse was at my house (!!!!!) and making sure that the three musketeers didn't suddenly decide to kill each other.  B was home to continue to babysit, so after an adorable but uneventful hour I headed back to CEC with a grain scoop in tow.  Trainer K uses coffee cans to measure grain, and the barn Spring had been at uses with 3-qt scoops, so we needed to do some fancy grain math to figure out how much food Spring was going to need.  I arrived just in time for feeding, which is a little crazy during camps, and ended up sticking around to help out.

view from the kitchen door <3

We got the grain measurements figured out pretty quickly, and after feeding was done I hung out with Spring for a little while, playing with the All Ears App and telling her what a pretty pony she is.  We decided to leave her in for the night so that her first foray into the pastures of CEC could be completely supervised (probably by 57 campers), and she seemed completely unperturbed by the whole new place/new barn/being in a stall thing.  Both of my horses seriously impressed me yesterday by their chill AF attitudes towards being uprooted.

greetings, small one

Back at home, I fed Leo in the barn, then went inside to take a nap.  I checked on the horses periodically throughout the night, and they were always hanging out quietly in the corner of the pasture nearest the house.  The last time that I checked them was around 1 am.  At 6:15 am this morning, B and I were woken up by a strange man pounding on our door.  B answered, then immediately woke me up - the guy wanted to know if we were missing a chestnut horse with a lot of white, because there was one running around in the road.  Worst. Way to wake up. Ever. 

ponies are scary

B and I were instantly in action - he took off on his bike and I took the car, slowly driving down the road in an attempt to find Leo.  The gates were all closed and latched, so we assumed that he must have jumped out - weird, because the fences are all about as high as the ones at CEC and he's never once jumped out before - but not completely unreasonable.  The five minutes that we spent looking for Leo were probably the scariest of my life, but we found him pretty quickly - he was pacing the fence line of a neighbor's yard, and came to me as soon as I called him.  He was sweaty and hot but seemed completely uninjured in any way.  I walked him back to the house wearing B's giant sandals because of course in my rush to get to the car I'd forgotten to put on shoes.  Once there, I immediately hosed him off and then began to walking to cool him out.  It was at this point that B noticed that the ponies were missing as well.

no way in hell those two jumped out

I wasn't ready to leave Leo anywhere unattended, so B took off in the car to try and find the little guys while I hosed Leo again, walked some more, then took him down to the barn to feed him his breakfast.  I was relieved that he hadn't jumped the fence; I'm not entirely sure what we would have done if he had, because it's already pretty tall, and since we're renting I don't know what the landlords would be okay with doing.  Thankfully, we have two big pastures that are attached by a small lot, so I was able to shut off the pasture that the three miscreants had escaped from.  Leo spent the 10 or so minutes after eating trotting around the back pasture, looking for his new friends and again, completely sound.

model? possibly.

Thankfully, B found the ponies two yards down, where they had only somewhat destroyed a very kind lady's front yard.  He was able to get a halter on the little one, and the bigger one followed behind as he led them home.  There was some fuss trying to get them back into the pasture - the bigger one doesn't like to be caught, and ended up trotting across the road again - but we were finally able to wrangle the two of them into the lot with Leo.  

Big pony. She does have a name.  It's Rosie.  My dog is also Rosie.

Reunited, the three of them soon got down to the serious business of eating all the grass in sight, and B went to walk to fenceline while I kept an eye on them.

Little pony.  Name: Grady. Nickname: Gravy. (Trainer K thought I said Gravy the first time
I told her about him, and B and I prefer Gravy to Grady, so that's what we're calling him)

Unfortunately, B was completely unable to find any sort of hole or gap in the fencing.  Our landlord came out tonight and the two of them walked it again - and again, were unable to find any clues as to how they got out.  The only thing that they could come up with is that they had somehow found a path into the woods, which aren't completely fenced off, and had come across something that let them escape - but again, they couldn't find it.  B is going to try and explore more thoroughly tomorrow, and for now they're hanging out in the back pasture - which they checked for escape opportunities, and found none.  Hopefully they'll still be where they belong when I get off work in the morning.  -_-

absolutely ridiculous. 

I spent an hour or so this afternoon messaging T, the trainer who restarted Spring after the year letdown she had when she came off the track, which was pretty cool - I learned a good deal about her.  I was able to swing by CEC this afternoon to check on her, and ended up staying to help with the afternoon feeding, which turned into staying to help Trainer K sort and label halters and lead ropes, which turned into making a bridle for Spring and fitting saddles to her, which turned into tacking her up for my friend M to ride in a lesson!  I won't be able to ride until Monday at the earliest, so I asked Trainer K to use Spring in a lesson or two so that she starts getting into the swing of things again.  CEC is a little short on lesson horses at the moment as several are out with injuries, so there is a slight chance that Spring might hang out there until the end of camp season if she seems like she would enjoy that lifestyle.  

Spring's first CEC lesson! photo credit - barn friend KM

I had to leave before the lesson actually began, but everyone who was there for it had nothing but good things to say about Spring.  M loved her, and a couple of my friends sent photos and video, including the picture above.  Everyone seemed to really like her, and the feedback I've gotten is that although she's pretty out of shape, she's incredibly smart and very, very willing to work.  I can't wait to ride her - hopefully I'll feel up to it on Monday.

Despite the craziness of the last 48 hours, I'm so, so happy.  My horses are in their places, happy, healthy, and despite a few hiccups seem ready to start their new lives.  Leo and co. just need to stay in their pasture, please.