December 23, 2010 Distraction can be a good thing

The arena at the new farm is a CoverAll with wood walls up to the base of the canvas roof.  In the wood walls are vents to allow for air flow.  Those vents are pretty much at eye level when I'm riding and I find myself peeking out to see where Rory is as I ride along that side of the arena.  The vents are small, but Rory's bright blue blanket stands out.  On Thursday I was riding in the arena and peeking out as usual when I caught a glimpse of blue and thought "That looks like Rory's outside his paddock!"  I stopped a couple of vents down and took a better look.  Rory had escaped.  I could see the gate hanging open and Totyo inside the fence in the corner wondering how Rory managed to get to the other side of the fence.  Fortunately my other horse is a very good boy and could be left for a few minutes on his own in the arena as I ran out and returned Rory to his paddock.  Rory hadn't gotten very far, just to the pile of not-so-good hay that had been removed from one of the other fields.  He was picking through looking for anything decent when I got out there.  He briefly considered running away from me, but then stopped and I put him back into his paddock.  I'm not sure how the gate could have gotten opened.  I go through it fairly regularly, but apart from round bale delivery no one else does and the latch is awkward enough to do up that I have to pay full attention to it.  Anyway, no harm done, and no two year old hooligans tearing around the property at high speeds...  Good thing I was a little distracted from my riding.

I took Rory's blanket off on the 18th.  The lining I'd sewn in had come unstitched, leaving the mesh to crawl back over Rory's tail again.  Since the weekend forecast was nice enough I took the blanket off and took it home to redo the extra lining.  Rory was happy to be naked and went off to play with Totyo.  It seems that he forgot all about blankets because when I brought it back Sunday evening Rory acted as if it were going to eat him when I put it back on.  We've had a couple of blanket desensitizing sessions since and he stood still while I threw it over him last night after his "stand politely on the cross ties" lesson.