Learning Curve

Sunday
I can't get near him this morning, so he has no fly spray on his face, and no mask. He has no mane or forelock, so nothing to help stop the flies clustering around his eyes. I hate to see it, but at the moment I can do nothing about it. The versatrine at least has stopped the mouche plats. He looks much less tight, tho', so hopefully he is relaxing a bit.
He came to speak to me tonight when I was talking to Os and Madge. Unfortunately she has obviously exhausted her supply of goodwill to skinny waifs, 'cos she tried to take a chunk out of him over the fence. I knew the snake-witch would return!! He has figured out that standing in the shed is cooler and the flies don't pester him as much, but he's so hungry he prefers his head down in the grass with flies. There's hay in the shelter for him, but I think that's all he's had for a while, so the grass is winning at the moment.
Feeding him was farcical. All the 4-leggeds came with me to help, greyhound, doberman, two kittens and a fat cat. The felines had a game of trapeze artists on the shelter posts, and the dogs were running round in circles barking at them.
He decided that the shelter was unsafe, and I decided to give up trying to speak to him.

Monday
The closest I can get to him in the field is to hand him a carrot with my hand behind my back so that I don't look at him. He won’t eat his food in the shelter tonight, despite the menagerie being locked in the house, so I have just had to leave him to it.
I have had it mentioned that he looks worse in the second set of pictures compared to the first set.
I think the differences are to do with photography and dehydration. The person who photographed him the first time said that he looked fatter in the photos than in reality. I also have some where he looks fatter than life. Grey, white and black do not reflect light as well as other colours, so the shape of a horse of those colours can be deceptive. To show what he was really like, I had to shoot him without the light directly on him, the sun was slightly behind him. Because he is so poor, he will also have visibly changed with dehydration and he drank, in the 15 hours after he arrived, a whole large black dustbin of water. I have no idea what size it is, but my other gees would take 4/5 days to drink that much. He also was visibly softer looking by the time I turned him out after those 15 hours, so I suspect it has to be water. He wanted to speak to me this morning, but bottled out at the last minute, so still progress of sorts!There was a suggestion that keeping him in would have helped with him accepting me more quickly, but in Fenix' case, I knew he needed grass, and I felt that any progress I made in the stable would be lost as soon as he went out anyway, because he was having to compromise and had to deal with me in his space, IMO a major issue for him. That is relevant only to him, tho', if I had read him differently, and thought it would have helped him, I would have kept him in. He's funny, he watches me with O & M and is astonished that they speak to me and come to me. You can see him thinking it might be a good idea, but there are too many scars at the moment.

What a nightmare tonight, we were hit with a massive rainstorm and I had to bring O & M in. I cleared the feed room (it is a stable!) and put a bed down to put him in. I then spent two and a half hours in the sluicing rain trying to get close enough to put a headcollar or rope on him.
No joy, so I had to leave him out.
I hardly slept a wink and was delighted to see him still happily grazing at daybreak. And I managed to get him to eat a carrot from my hand, facing me! M & O are a bit miffed at the carrot supply not going over their throats!



Wednesday
He’s getting braver with me every day. And when the rainstorm started again on Wednesday evening, I had to go and try and catch him again.
He was letting me stroke his neck as he ate, so very slowly I was trying to slide the rope over the base of his neck as I scratched him. Irritatingly, the food ran out just as I was nearly there. I stopped and he went forward to the other side of the feed bowl, sniffed the headcollar lying there and took off.
Back with more food in the bucket, and he came back towards me, and amazingly let me put the rope over his shoulders, and then the headcollar on. I wanted to jump up and down with joy, but of course I couldn’t. Still not an entirely a trusting wee person, he snorted all the way to the stables and seemed totally perplexed by what was happening to him.
In the morning, he was covered in stains so he had obviously lain down all night, which is brilliant as it means he felt safe enough to do so. And I have the excuse of not grooming at the moment too! I had a bit of a struggle putting the headcollar on again, as he wanted to run through the door, and I couldn’t reach the bolt to shut it from the inside, so I was holding the door shut with my foot trying to tempt him to put his head into the headcollar. I thought it unlikely to succeed and so it proved!
Eventually I had to stand outside the door, and he let me put it on that way. Confusing, but it worked.

I nearly cried when he went out to his field. He stood and looked about as if he couldn’t believe he knew where he was, then he put his head down and started munching. Happy pony, happy me!

Friday
I chucked the dogs out the door first thing this morning, and in a minute all I could hear was Zak (doberman) barking furiously. I went sprinting out to see Fenix lying down, with Zak careering round him in circles. I immediately thought colic, as I have never seen him lie down in the field before, but I think he was just having a rudely interrupted snooze. He got to his feet as I approached, and was fine.



He now comes to me in the field to see if I have any carrots. It is a week since he arrived and I cannot believe he has progressed so far mentally in such a short time. The cats don’t worry him any more, and neither obviously does Zak.
I think he has just been running wild all his life, I don’t think he has had any human interaction other than herding him about at sales and on lorries. I think he has put on some weight, but there’s still a distance to go.

All in all, he’s further on than I would have thought possible.

Late Arrival

After many changed plans, Fenix finally arrived last night at about 1.30 am. When the driver opened the partition to let him out, I couldn't believe how shrunken and wasted he looked. He was so scared, and was really afraid to even come down the ramp. It made me wonder what would go through the minds of the horses arriving in Italy when they were at the top of a ramp for the last time in their lives, seeing what was ahead.

He wobbled down the ramp, and as it was so dark, I put him in a stable rather than turn him out when he couldn't see his boundaries. I took off the transporters' headcollar and let him settle for a minute or two whilst I saw the lorry out on towards the next stop off. The headlights lit up my two horses, Ossie and Madge standing in the field gateway, and they looked so healthy and well in comparison with the little waif in my stable, it was hard to believe they were the same species.

I went back in to give him a feed and he was tearing into the hay with a vengeance, but as soon as I opened the door, he shot to the back of the box in a panic. He didn't understand the corner feed manger, so I had to fetch a rubber floor basin and put the food in that instead. He still wouldn't touch it until I had left the stable and shut the door.

I left him to it, so that both of us could get some sleep. It took me a while to drop off, I was worried by how small he looked, and scared he was. And what on earth had I done to take him on ....? In the midst of scrambled dreams and thoughts, I was awoken at 3.40am when the transporters called to tell me they were about to deliver me a horse! It took a minute to engage my brain and have them understand that they had dialled the wrong number and that I already had my horse, thanks!


It was with a fair dollop of trepidation that I went out this morning to give him a handful of grub and carrots and then turn him out. I was worried about the reactions of my two next door, how respectful he would be of the electric fence, how sound he would be and whether he would panic and run around blindly.
No worries......there was no chance of getting anywhere near him, let alone close enough to put a headcollar on him to lead him to the field. I had visions of him stuck in the stable for days, unable to touch him and build his trust!

I was relieved to see that he was not too small, just incredibly poor, but even so, there's still a long road ahead to restore him to health. I had a brief look in his mouth, and his teeth indicate to me he is a bit older than I thought, maybe six. But then, I don't really have a clue beyond a four year old mouth, so I'll wait for the EDT to pass judgement.

I left him again with his food, then came back and topped up his hay and water, and sat in the corner to try and have him accept me a bit. I don't know when he last ate or drank, but he consumed nearly half a bale of hay over night, and was wolfing into the next lot as if he'd never seen it before, and drank nearly half a black dustbin of water.

So, to cut a long story short, with loads of body language and carrots, and going in and out of the stable throughout the day, I managed to gain his confidence enough for him to let me put a headcollar on early this evening. He had become so confident with me and the carrots, it was heartbreaking to see him revert to a wreck as soon as I had a means of controlling him. I took it off and put it back on again several times, to try and break any association of using it as a control for him, and he accepted it better each time. I even managed to put the fly repellant on his neck and back, albeit with him shrinking and shaking.

Rightly or wrongly, I made the decision to put him out as grass is what his poor little body needs. I have sectioned off a paddock with a big shelter, he is adjacent to the other horses for company but not in any danger of being bullied. All my worries of the morning were still there, of course, but it had to be done.





Madge was first out of the barn with Ossie in hot pursuit. I was wary, as any new horse that Madge meets she tries to kill over whatever barrier is put in her way, including the electric tape, and both she and Ossie in the past have spent hours running up and down fences protecting each other from the invaders.






Unbelievably, the evil, rolling-eyed, flattened-eared witch-snake that lurks close to the surface of Madge's smiling demeanour failed to materialise, and as she politely introduced herself, so did Ossie. Stunned, I watched as they all meandered down the fence, had another chat, and started to graze happily. I can only assume that Fenix is so cowed by his experiences that he offers no threat whatsoever to them. He had a trot around, and appears to be sound and active, and then had a roll, which pleased me no end as he obviously feels a degree of safety to do that.
But he looks so emaciated standing beside them, the photos make him much fatter than he is.



I have now just been out to feed them tonight, and he is wary of letting me touch him again, but nothing like this morning. There seems to be a gobstopper sized lump on the outside his near hind pastern. Hopefully it is a knock and nothing more serious, but time will tell. I cannot get close enough to have a proper look as yet.

Fenix seems a very sweet person, I think he is quite intelligent, he appears to learn quickly, so hopefully we are off on the right track. He's at least got a chance now.