three red horses

Pistol seems to be settling in just fine at the farm. He seems more calm and relaxed out in the pasture. He even came right up to me last night when I got home from work and went to check on him. We also reintroduced the other horses to him. On Sunday we had put them all together but it was basically a great big power struggle. While it was beautiful to see the horses galloping full speed across the pasture, I figured it was a lot of stress on Pistol, so we pulled Duke and Piney and put them back in their smaller pen. Piney was pretty pathetic in their pasture race. I wish I had video. He was like the little kid trying to keep up with the big kids. Not.even.close. If I didn’t have photographic and video proof that he was in fact a race horse…a WINNING racehorse, I would honestly not believe he was even a thoroughbred. He tried to play a few times, but then gave up and came back to snuggle me.  That’s my boy.

When we re-introduced them last night, it was pretty uneventful. They sniffed each other and then went to grazing. I was doing something in the yard when I heard thundering hooves, when I looked up it was just Duke and Pistol having a little “I’m the boss here” match race. Piney couldn’t even be bothered to join in on their reindeer games. I have noticed though when I threw out some hay Piney got pretty aggressive towards Pistol and kept chasing him off. I had about 6 piles scattered around, so he was able to find some. Hopefully he will stop being such a creep. That’s how all the other horses treated Piney when he first got to his adventure camp last year. It really is interesting to watch horses interacting with each other, especially when there is a newbie.

Both Piney and Duke crave human contact. While I used to think it was because they only wanted food (which is true about 50% of the time), they will come up and snuggle, often fighting for my attention. When I groom Piney in the pasture, Duke will inch closer and closer to me. He loves being groomed, as does Piney. They just love being loved on. Pistol still has that distant look in his eye and once he is on the end of a lead rope he seems to enjoy human contact, but he still hasn’t completely warmed up to the idea of us. He is pretty head shy, so I’m hoping we can get that figured out. Piney isn’t a fan of having me monkey with his ears, he is tolarent of whatever I do to him.

When I wormed Piney the other day, I was thankful that he was an ex racehorse because squirting wormer into his mouth didn’t even faze him. I squirted it in his mouth and he was like “whatevs!” Duke looked at me like I was going to shove a lit stick of dynamite in his mouth. Pistol had the same look. Soooo we had to trick them. I had treats in my hand and shoved them  in, and while they were grabbing for a treat, I shoved the tube in and pushed up the trigger. I wasn’t their favorite person after that. But hey it worked and they still accept treats.  

I am happy that everyone is getting along for the most part. I’m sure it will only get better with time.  I love those three red monsters...most of the time ;-)