This question was raised a couple of times recently on the GHS message board, and it seemed to be perfect timing, as I’d been pondering why all of a sudden things are finally connecting with me and G. At least it seems like it’s all happening at once. When I mentioned that G was a different horse, I was asked “how so”. So I pondered....
Prior to our barn move back in April, G lived his day time hours in a paddock by himself, with horses on either side of him and across the aisle way between rows. At night he spent his time behind bars with only the view of the highway in the back and the two horses across the aisle from him. During those 6 years, as much as I worked on bettering our communication, G always had to challenge things. Some times it wasn’t a direct challenge or at first request challenge, but in the course of working it would arise. I chalked it up to G being the personality that he was, and since I was continually maintaining the passive leader role, what other explanation could there be?
Since we moved G to the new barn this April, he lives in a herd of five geldings during the day, with a mixed herd of six in one adjoining pasture, and a mare herd of six on the other side. He is the #3 horse in his herd, and he appears to be content where he’s positioned as he never challenges #1 or #2. At night he is stalled but the set up here is quite different. He has an open stall door where he can hang his head out into the aisle way and see the comings and goings as well as any other horse that happens to be “hanging out”. Now the back of his stall houses a double dutch door, which leads out to a nice sized turnout. During the summer and most of this fall, he has been able to come and go from his stall at night and play with his best buddy Irish over the fence rail. Within a month G started to become a different horse in small ways. He's more trusting on the trail; calmer; is loading nicely in the trailer; responding faster to my requests and cues and overall a much more relaxed horse. He’s even happy to come to me when I arrive at the pasture, which is something I was sure I would lose once he had pasture to graze upon and buddies to play with.
So my conclusions over all this is that when G was paddocked by himself, even though he had horses on either side of him, that he was the boss of his herd of one. So when I showed up at the barn, he would continue to try and maintain that position in our herd of two. Now that he's #3 horse in a herd of 5, I think that this has taken a little of the wind out of his sails so to speak. He's learned that if he doesn't challenge the #1 or #2 horses he has quite the content life right where he's at. Now as I maintain my status as #1 in our herd of two he doesn't feel the need to challenge it any more. So maybe I’m reading too much into this, maybe not. But whatever “it” is, I’ll happily take it because this reward just seems so grand in our 7.5 year journey.
I couldn't have asked for a move to go smoother than today; it was truly one of the best horsie days I've had in a long time. We arrived right on schedule and the barn owner was there to meet & greet us. We put G out in the outdoor arena with some hay while we took care of the boarding contract etc. We got to talking and due to the weather I agreed that G was being so mellow that maybe it was a good time for him to meet the herd boss one on one, so she went and got Suny and brought him over. Suny is maybe 14.3, and black. She put in another couple flakes of hay and G of course went right for it. Suny had other ideas. They squealed at each other, pawed at the air and Suny ran G off the hay. I'd say it took about 40 minutes and when I looked out, the two of them were standing together nuzzling each others withers. When the owner came back out we talked about how great it went, and she said that Suny generally doesn't take to other horses like this. So if he got along with Suny, the rest of the group was a piece of cake so we put him out with the herd. It was so interesting to watch how if a horse started to get a little too pushy, G would walk over to Suny and Suny would pin his ears at the pursuer. G's smarter than I thought....befriend the boss and he'll be your protector, lol. Anyway, this is the first time in 5.5 years that he's been turned out with other horses, and it so did my heart good to see him play and behave like, well a horse! So what we thought might take three days took less than an hour, and G now has four herd mates.
Meeting the rest of the herd (Suny is the black horse on the left):
lol, meeting Irish up close and personal like:
The barn:
Yep, I hear a dinner cart coming!
Big roomy stall with mats and lots of cushy sawdust:
When we drove back in after dinner we were greeted with this face (he's got a runout out this door):
Two H A P P Y campers!!
A little video of G, Irish and Suny:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNNytaI4m68
I believe we may have found horsie heaven. Tonight I am going to sleep soundly for sure.
Will a horse be happy going from having a grass paddock all to itself for five years to being with a herd of 4 horses on a 2 acre grass pasture? Okay, so maybe not "happy" but more content. I often think that although he has paddock fence mates all around, that G is isolated as he's not really in a herd. Any thoughts?
