Badger's First Week

First week at the ranch! Badger's been eating like, well, a horse. I don't know if it's too early to see progress yet, but here's a couple pics from today:

He's gonna be so pretty when he gets filled out. ^_^ (And HUGE)

Unfortunately, we're also starting to see the first signs of him being a bit of a snot, now that he's getting more food in him. I had to spend a little extra time working with him today because he was a little halter-shy when I went to go put it back on him. As in, shuffling to the far corner of his pen and trying to turn away. No turning your butt towards me! That's rude.

Chasing him (gently) for a few laps around his pen seems to give him the idea, though. And, once his halter was on, he actually followed really nicely, and stopped when told to. Overall his manners are going to be really nice too, so long as he knows who's the boss. For an old guy he can move pretty quick...if I wasn't paying attention when I was putting him back in the pen, he would have darted past me and back out! Maybe he wasn't quite done with being walked around! Good sign he's feeling better, though. Next time I'll have to walk him around for longer, or maybe even let him go in the turnout area (basically a giant 'free play' fenced arena for the horses to run around and have fun).

If I had to guess by his expression when I picked up the halter, this was mostly fear that we were going to put that thing on him and leave it there. As far as we could tell, while he was at that other woman's house, she just left the halter on him 24/7, which is not only dangerous, but also uncomfortable. I don't blame him for not wanting to wear it after that, but the vet's coming on Tuesday so he's gotta remember how to behave. Tracy (ranch owner) attributes this to his Thoroughbred side. His mom was 1/2 TB, so he does have quite a lot in him (look up Appendix Quarter Horses for more info). It's why he's so tall and leggy compared to most Quarter Horses.

Next we also have to work on teaching him to put his head down...while the bridle wasn't too much of a problem since I only have to be able to reach his nose and the side of his head, balancing on tiptoe and trying to reach high enough to put his ears through the hole in his fly mask was a bit of an effort. On top of that, I had already been told by the original rescuer that he really wasn't keen on wearing his mask, so there was another several minutes of behave-or-I-chase-you before he'd stand still for me to put it on. Still, even though he doesn't like the fly mask, it's gotta be better than the flies poking around his eyes...if only I could attach something to his poor tail so he could take care of the other end too. Thankfully fly season will be over soon, and then he won't have to care for several months.