Tuesday, October 10, 2006

Day Three

Grace has settled extremely well and today has been the best day yet. At first she was quite stressed in the field, galloping about all day and not being accepted into the mares’ herd. It did not help that she has come in season, so spent all day tarting at the boys over the hedge.

Her second day in the field was much better. Although she was still being chased away, she started getting a little closer to the mares. I have been lunging her every day she has behaved really well. In fact, she was so good on Monday that I decided to jump on for a few minutes. There were a few bucking fits, but apart from that she was really quite good. I realise this was probably a bit soon, but I was just so excited. For the next few days I will only lunge her in her tack, get her fitness up before I get on again.

Today was the third day at Newhouse and she just keeps improving. She was much more settled in the field and was great to catch and have her feet trimmed in the afternoon. This good behaviour carried on to tonight…

We had a beauty session! Her mane is much shorter and although she started being a bit awkward about it, she soon realised that it wasn’t as bad as she thought and if she ate her net she couldn’t feel it as much. It needs tidying up a bit more, but I thought she had put up with enough so will have another go tomorrow.

Another first for her was having the clippers run over her body. They were just some mini clippers but they make quite a lot of noise with the blade guard on. I have to admit I did expect a decent sort of reaction, but Grace did not bat an eyelid. She turned to look at the clippers and then carried on eating her net. I ran them all over her, including her face and ears and she was brilliant!

We are ready for clipping on Saturday and we are getting to know each other through every experience.

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