More Breakage

It was blowing wicked cold yesterday at the barn, a one day front that dropped the temperature to single digits by early this morning. The horses had been put outside at midday and I arrived about 2:30pm to another day of them being bored out of their minds with winter. The Halflingers had broken through a section of fence and were wandering around the inner part of the grounds, bothering horses in the turn out rings and trying to find something else to break. They were being ignored by the pony that usually has the run of that area, who was staring me in the face when I opened the rear door to check on things. 

An hour or so later, when we started bringing the horses in for the night, we realized that the old thoroughbred mare was standing calmly behind a gate between paddocks that was secured by... absolutely nothing. The chain for the clip on the gate was snapped. Maybe the Welsh pony in heat had started a ruckus under the mare's nose again or maybe the mare had spontaneously kicked out. One of the buckles on her blanket was hanging loose.

The wind was sucking the warmth out of the barn, which usually stays surprisingly warm thanks to the 14 horses inside. I closed the two year old in his stall earlier than usual and retrieved his ball from the ring to put inside with him. He relies for some of his sanity on toys, balls with rubber loops that he can grab with his teeth and toss around. Unfortunately he hasn't had much luck getting other horses to play with him. We regularly find his balls in the stall of the 37 year old draft horse, or the middle of the aisle after an unsuccessful attempt to toss it to a horse across the way. The youngster won't give up on the idea that one of these days the other horse will pick it up and toss it back to him like we do.