I said I'd ignore everything but blood...but this is ridiculous!

Another boarder has horses which often are kept in their stalls, but when they are turned out into their large paddock, they come up to Daisy's small covered area and stick their heads and necks as far as they can into her area, and taunt her. These horses are hungry! They are kept "lean" and they are NOT happy about it.

Daisy strikes out with a foot, trying to tell them in horse language to get the heck out of her space. They, being loose, are fine, but Daisy, in a confined space, has battered her pretty front legs around the front of the pastern area.

She was just starting to heal up when the people started turning their horses loose again. This morning she had dried blood on both front legs and the wounds were larger. This is very frustrating, to board where horses can walk up to a barn/covered turn-out area and raise Cain. However this is the same barn which uses water from a ground water run-off stream, with Round-up, fertilizer, oil and gas running into it, and where the manure pile is open and accessed by the previously mentioned, hungry horses.

I shared my concerns with the owners of this place, but they didn't want to put up a steel stake and wire second fence to keep the marauding horses away from the four stall barn where my horse is kept. There are no other boarders in this barn at the moment, so my horse is the only one getting "the business" from these two horses.

I have requested the "honor" of Daisy being moved to a different place on the property when that becomes available. I'll still have to haul in all her water, as I don't want her coming down with cancer or something equally awful from drinking the bad water, but she'd have pasture, a stall for shelter in bad weather, and she'd not be standing on blacktop anymore. Can you imagine: putting down blacktop in a small covered turn-out area?! And it is not flat, so urine pools in the dips in the blacktop.

This just goes to show that now all folks who follow natural horsemanship and the Parelli's ideas are wealthy folks with covered indoor arenas and expensive Parelli equipment (grin). I salute those who are that well heeled, but some of us are not, and one can still utilize natural horsemanship methods...it just takes a bit more thought and effort.

Gee, did I happen to mention that the owner of the two marauding horses who have been tormenting Daisy also has cluttered up the smallish outdoor arena with her trail obstacles, to the point that one can only circle the outside track because the inside is completely filled with barrels, road cones, a tilting bridge, a platform, a long narrow "bench," and poles? The bench, platform and bridge are too heavy for a human to move--it would take a tractor or ATV and a rope. I inquired nicely, and was advised that the boarder who owns all that stuff would not want it shifted.

I have attempted to work on Level 1 games in the arena, trying to navigate around all those clunky obstacles (I moved the lighter weight stuff to one side while I was using the arena, then moved it back after I was done, however the heavy obstacles each took up part of the space of a third of the arena, so taken all together, the arena was STILL unusable for the most part). Daisy clonked herself as she'd come around and being very green, was of two minds. Things to avoid in her path, she wanted to follow her own ideas, naturally, being an LBE, and she'd collide with a large,  heavy object. More blood (sigh).

So I took to working with her in the round pen, which has its own problems. Never mind that the boards are rotting and you have to lift way UP on the gate to latch it (groan--it's heavy). Round pens were never designed to give you a whole lot of space, right? So the whole pen becomes an enormous "crutch" to the horse and its education. If you work a horse in a round pen, the fences confine the horse. When you branch out to open space, many times the horse will "branch out" also, and not the way you want it to, either.

I did borrow some road cones and brought a tarp, to give Daisy something to work with, but she needs to be encouraged to do figure 8's around road cones and there is very little space for that in a round pen. She needs the room to be forced to use her mind to think about where she is putting her feet, instead of "falling asleep at the switch" so easily in a round pen.

My daughter suggested that I consider draping padding such as a blanket over the fence, so that Daisy won't be so likely to re-injure her front feet. Ideally, I'd like to fasten wire fencing material (hog

 

wire) over the entire space where the horses are sticking their heads and necks over, but part of that is a gate (which leads to the aforementioned open manure pile) and the gate should not be blocked. So I'll take a peek in the linen closet and see what we've got that is "expendable."