Lay With Me

Picture proof, courtesy of D

I caught Walker laying down in his stall today.  For the first time ever.  Yeah, that's right.  In the entire 11 months I've had him, I have never seen him laying down - not in his stall, not in the paddock, never.  The other day I walked in and I know he was laying down because I heard him get up, but I never actually saw it.

Today, however, he was laying down in his stall and let me go in with him.  He was kind of moaning and groaning a little bit, but he put his head in my lap and let me give him lots of love.  It was pretty cute.  Other than the moaning and groaning of course which worried me a little bit.  So after I reveled in the moment, I made him get up just to satisfy me that he wasn't sick.

I was still feeling sick again today so I didn't plan to ride.  D and J were there (whose horses I rode earlier in the week), and so we decided to turn them out together in the indoor arena.  This may have been a bad idea because all though all three of them have been turned out together before and Walker and Starr are turned out together regularly, Walker was clearly in a bad mood.  There was some hay in the arena and he refused to share with the other two, which caused a mass upheaval.  We three were actually in the arena with them and had to crawl up on top of the therapeutic mounting block to stay out of the way of flying hooves and galloping horses.  I'm sure they get into arguments like that all the time, but usually Walker is the friendliest horse ever.  I've actually never seen him kick another horse, let alone find any kick marks on his body.  We managed to split them up, and that was that.  It was probably the dynamic of three horses in a small enclosed space in the middle of a blizzard that set them off.

After that, we set up the arena so that we could free lunge.  I didn't do much of that with Walker because it turned out that in his argument with the other horses, he crashed into a bunch of jump standards and had a little cut on his leg.  I let him run for a little bit but then I decided to clean it out and put some ointment on it.  Mommy to the rescue!

Anyway, you know how when you free lunge a horse, they will eventually come to you in the middle and follow you around.  Well, when I do this with Walker, he will follow me no problem, but only at a walk.  D can get Starr to follow her at a trot, but Walker is simply too lazy.  Tabu, on the other hand, will follow J at a canter.  I mean, she can run as fast as she can around the arena and he will canter after her.  He will canter after anyone, and when we discovered this, we played Tag with Tabu which was both fun and terrifying.  There's nothing like having a horse right behind you going full speed to make you question your sanity!