Cassie Archives • Page 4 of 5 • The Prodigal Stranger

16th April 201716th April 2017

First Day of Freedom

I braided Emilie’s mane and forelock yesterday. She loves being braided. Or rather, she loves the attention.

Finally! After first four weeks of complete box rest, and then four weeks of teeny tiny paddock alone, Emilie got introduced to space enough to run, and to the company of another horse today. Her life quality just improved 400%.

Welsh Mountain pony Cassie and Emilie are box neighbours but that doesn’t mean they’re friends. Yet.

Things went pretty smooth on the whole. Emilie took one big bouncy gallop and otherwise kept quite relaxed.

Emilie really wants to be Cassie’s friend but Cassie thinks that Emilie needs to wine and dine her first.

Stop following me everywhere! Wait, don’t walk too far away!

We’re allowed to start Emilie very quietly on light work now too. She is not to carry a rider yet and we’re not supposed to ask her to trot or gallop (though she can if she wants to). So we have started on agility and clicker training to keep her little head busy.

And to finish off a nice day, grooming in the sun with hay.

And this is what a triple braided forelock looks like the day after. The 1980s called, they want Tina Turner back.

13th April 201713th April 2017

Soon! Freedom! Soon!

Emilie is still not allowed more action than a short walk for grass in the sun. She enjoys those a lot and she’s become quite apt at communicating where she wants to go. It’s not unusual for her to trot along at a walking pace because why walk if you can trot? As long as she doesn’t pull, I remain unbothered.

On Sunday it’s been two months since her surgery and her long isolation from other horses comes to an end. We plan to give her an hour or two with shetland pony Prins for the first couple of days, and then put her out properly with maybe him and Welsh Mountain Cassie. Both are quite relaxed, which is required: It’s another month before Emilie is supposed to run around and play much.

I can’t imagine how much her life quality will improve when she gets a bit more space and gets to talk to someone of her own species at last. I still feel utterly guilty about what we’ve had to put that poor horse through, and so incredibly grateful at how patient she’s been.

Karoline amused herself with giving Emilie the complete braid-over a couple of days ago.

I took the braids out today. Now that’s one curly-haired blond lady!

There’s a lot of talk lately about the equine pain face and how to recognise it. Well, this is the equine face of I have sunshine on my ass and I love being groomed.

11th March 2017

Littlest Rider

Small riders need pony love too.

8th February 20178th February 2017

Emilie Has Landed!

Virkelystens Emilie, cordially known as Mille, took the two and a half hour drive from Skive to Taulov in stride. She walked right up into the trailer without a concern, and only hopped around a bit in there when we were braking to come to a halt. She wasn’t thrilled about driving — never met a horse that was — but eh, if that’s what we wanted, then that’s what we got.

We tossed her into the outdoors arena when unloaded but she didn’t really have a lot of stress to let out. She strolled around a little investigating things, found a bit of leftover hay from when we used the arena as Pilar’s sick pen, and… that was pretty much it.

Once we were certain she was taking everything in stride we moved her into Pilar’s box which is now going to be hers.

We also introduced her to her new neighbour, Cassie, the Welsh Mountain pony that was Pilar’s best friend. They seemed to get along fine.

28th January 2017

Diamonds Are Forever

Pilar isn’t out of the woods yet, but she is sure as heck living up to her registered name, Diamant (Diamond). Indestructible. Harder than hard. Tougher than tough. The Arya Stark of equines. What do we say to death? Not today.

We got to visit Pilar today and take her out into the indoors arena a little. She’s weak and tired and didn’t really care to do a lot but we could tell she was happy to just be out of that box. The braids in her hair are for the drip. It gets taped to them and inserted in the shaved area on her neck. They’re still flushing her stomach four times a day but she gets to have sugar water, filtered mash, and a few handfuls of actual food pellets a day now.