Boarding - better than bad, but not great

Today was rough. It was my first day being frustrated with boarding.

Betinna said, "You need to go feed your horse, he has no food." Not again.

I went to clean his paddock and just like every day since Willy went on vacation, my horse was standing at his gate and neighed at me urgenty when he saw me, instead of standing over his bathtub eating. Again no food. As I clean his paddock he follows me around nosing me almost impolitely, seemingly begging me to get him out of there.

The bucket in the trailer, he almost dragged me in to get to food. That is one good thing, but you should see how thin he is.

I am amazed that there are two horses on the property who are over 30, and mine is the only thin one. I would take a photo but I don't think I can. Don't panic, I keep telling myself. It's only while Willy is away, or only as long as Mag lives there. Being thin is  not the worst thing, he could be lame. But being hungry is making it difficult to train him. Well, except for the trailer!

Yah, eventually I'll have to work on the trailer without food, but why not use it for a while longer if it's easy for him.

Betinna said, "You must speak to Gabi about your horse having no food."

Right, my first complaint to my barn owner. Ugh. I went right up and did it. And Gabi said, "Oh he just throws the hay into the mud and won't eat it."

I see. So he's being punished for wasting hay because he doesn't have a net to eat from like all the others? All the others have nets over the round bales so there is little waste.

I told Gabi how much I hate waste, how I spent 200E on 50 tiny bales of hay last night. And how every piece of hay is precious to us.

I have a suspicion that the hay is actually haylage and it's moldy. At least the bale I saw today by his paddock was - it looked like it had snowed on it, but no, all mold. If it's crappy food, of course he's tossing it into the mud. What to do. This is boarding. I remember it well. No control over what your horse gets to eat.

Except that I can at night. I stuff two huge nets full every day for him for overnight, and he eats them entirely, way more than he ever ate here overnight. I also pick out all the weeds, which wow, that's a lotta weeds. At least the hay I bought last night isn't full of weeds. I'm tempted to bring it to the barn but that's just crazy, I pay them for what now? Most people have stall cleaning included in their board, but I have to deal with that every day before I see my horse. It's not terrible, it's even kind of nice on days I have lots of daylight hours ahead of me, but I sometimes am jealous of the people who arrive to a clean stall and go get their horse immediately and start grooming.

But in addition to the $$$ we're paying to board there, now we're investing in beet pulp and pellets and oil to try to keep my horse from blowing away in the wind. Which, if Mag were a hard working horse, would be expected. But you cannot call what Mag does work.

Perhaps because Mag is only there temporarily, Gabi doesn't want to invest in a hay feeder for him.

Gabi said, "I just fed him at 1pm" It was 3. I went out there and there was no hay in the trough. Hm, did he eat it or did he toss it into the mud?

J was so helpful tonight, trying to think of a way to put a net over a bathtub. Gabi said, "It has to be simple for us to fill, if you bring a net."

I am not sure I can make a simple solution for them, and I know that Willy will be back in 12 days.

It just really upset me to look out and see 20 horses eating hay, and my horse standing at his gate asking for something to eat. And he's just agitated lately, impatient and pushy and knocking my head with his chin and almost grouchy when he sees his bucket. I don't let him eat from it until he looks at me politely, but it takes a few moments. And I feel terrible, I feel like I can't ask him to work if he's been standing without food since 8 am.

I was in such a bad mood, and then Nina came to me and said, "Your horse was running circles in his paddock crazily yesterday." "Why?" "No idea." OK.....That is to be expected, he likes to run, but hmmmmm was she implying something?

As dark as the clouds were over my head, I had to smile at Gabi when she said, "It's time! I'm going to hook up my two new cart ponies for the first time!" She had a professional there to help her and he was nice. He saw me hanging out with Mag and said, "You wanna do a troika, three before the cart?" I said, "I just wanna see!" and I made Mag wait with me at a very respectful distance from the cart as they worked out the harness and hitched them up. In fact we were so far way - 40 meters? - that Mag didn't know what was going on and didn't care and was fidgeting like crazy as I leaned against the arena wall. Every time a horse went by he went "HORSE!" and after no less than 20 minutes I crept us a little closer and he saw better what was going on. What huh!? His eyes were huge. One of the cart ponies saw us and tilted his head back to keep an eye on us. I was so afraid we'd cause a problem or an accident because of Mag being there. But the ponies were good, they actually had all 8 hooves on the ground the entire time. Then they got in the cart and the ponies took off at a trot happily.

Now Mag has seen the coaches go by our pasture, but this was new, in a new place, and he was fascinated. His tail went straight up over his back and I let him walk closer, careful to stay back. The ponies turned into a huge pasture and started doing laps. We watched the whole time. The wheels were sinking in the mud so it was very hard for them to pull but that's a good tactic to slow their enthusiasm a little on their first trip.

Mag got bored, started chewing on a tractor tire, and then Gabi yelled, "Get out of the way, we're coming through!" and I moved and they went trotting by, out into the street, out into Wuppertal.

Wow! I loved it, it was worth the wait. And as Mag apparently needed some patience standing on the line training, it was just as good as working in the arena, in my mind. He was seriously perplexed about why we stood there so long doing nothing.

It was getting dark and I all I wanted was to be home in my warm house. Thankfully Ducky was in his stall so Mag wouldn't be alone in the barn, cuz I was not going to turn him back out into that paddock with no food again today.

Tomorrow my friend S is going to drive all the way to Wuppertal to see Mag's barn, and help me work with him a little. I know she's gonna freak out when she sees how thin he is, but there's nothing I can do about that. I told her to drive in her own car behind mine because I have way too much work to do for her to be stuck there observing. It takes me 20 minutes to clean my stall, and then my paddock and then hay bags, and water....

Looking forward to S's visit so much! You know, she pushed me to buy Mag.

And now that we've been working so much in the arena on the lunge and ground work, I think she will be interested to see how Mag's skills stack up against her Bintu's. Bintu and Mag have the same basic personality (hm, both from the same dealer....). Both fractious and lazy, they resist work heartily! (With much energy expenditure showing us how much they resist work, *lol*)

I look forward to her helping me refine my in-hand lateral work and all the fancy stuff she knows about those blue and yellow foam pole things, she loves those, and we have about 15 of them!

In the year I've owned Mag, S has only seen him twice, because our barns are an hour's walk from each other, and Mag was lame in the middle of Summer when she does most of her riding.

Looking forward, despite a crummy day....