Hello, Aliso

Today went surprisingly smoothly, all things considered.

We started off the day with a stop at the local coffee shop on the way to the new barn, and I had a delicious English breakfast tea latte and a raspberry scone. Yum! We unloaded the hay and cleaned up the paddock and set out piles of hay before heading to SHI to get the girls. Of course it seemed like absolutely everybody was at the barn! So much for trying to sneak away.

Hope and Faith loaded very nicely but I could hear Hope's neighbor, Willy, calling to her as we pulled away and it was breaking my heart! We learned that a horse at the barn had recently been put down, and another one sold that I remembered when she was born, and all the memories and emotions...ahhH! Before we hit the end of the driveway I was dripping tears. It wasn't that I was regretting the decision to go, just ... melancholy I guess.

However when we got to Aliso the mares unloaded into their new paddock without fanfare and seemed to settle very quickly to eating the hay and checking out their new digs. Hope in particular was fascinated by the big water trough. I watched her take probably a dozen little drinks. I think she liked the idea of having access to the large amount of water at a time. At SHI she had an automatic waterer which refills a small basin whenever she drank it down below a certain point. We watched them for awhile, unpacked all of their supplements, met the manager's assistant and ran into a few of my clients. Finally we headed back to SHI to pick up Jordan.

I was shocked and pleasantly surprised by the interactions between the three horses once they were all together. There was a lot of squealing on the girls parts, but no aggression by anyone! Jordan was more interested in asserting his dominance over the neighboring horse trio's leader, and there was some rearing and posturing over the fence. Eventually Hope, Faith and Jordan were galloping around a bit, and when Jordan got too close to Faith she planted a hoof in his chest. Oof! Look, you can almost see her frog! :-P

I couldn't believe how much movement was going on. All 3 of them were moving from one hay pile to the next, to the water, back to the hay, to the 3 neighbors watching curiously from the fence, to me, back to the hay, etc. And through all of it I was truly impressed with how well my horses were getting on. I don't know who surprised me the most!!

We came home for awhile and then went back around 6 or 7pm to give supplements and make sure they were still doing well. Supplement time is going to be a challenge, because of Hope. She's a slow picky eater with her vitamins. At Sporthorse she would eat a little and then come back to them over the course of many hours. At Aliso, Jordan and Faith will just come over and eat whatever Hope left behind. I have no ideas at this point on how to remedy the problem. Any thoughts are very welcome!!!

Anyway, I'm exausted and have a full day's work tomorrow before I can get back out and see how they are doing. I hope all goes well!! :)