Did I mention that Nova has learned to walk on water and escape from
the pasture. That was when the water was ice. Then she learned to
walk on real water and escape from the pasture too.
The fence guy showed up today. Thank Goodness. When Nova comes
home from Pine Dell, she won’t be able to escape.
Fast forward to Pine Dell. A new training horse is kept in a stall
for a day or two while it gets accustomed to the routine. Then the
horse is let out with the training horses in their own pasture.
Nova stayed in her stall with me visiting her on Monday & Tuesday.
She got to have her first lessons. It then became the last possible
shopping and wrapping days for Christmas and I didn’t make it to
Pine Dell to see how she was doing.
Monday, I visited Pine Dell to find Nova in a stall. The stall
cleaners told me that she had been turned out, but discovered the
few places where the strand of hot tape wasn’t hot. People would
look out to the pasture and see Nova in the adjacent pastured with
the turn-out horses. They would look again later and see that she
was back with the training horses. They discovered that she just
ducked her head under the place where the tap was not hot and
squeezed under the fence. She was nice and didn’t break the tape
…just squeezing underneath it.
Nova’s stall cleaner on this day (the day after Christmas when Nova
had to be in a stall all day and all night) told me that Nova had
been naughty. The stall cleaner was in the stall with Nova and had
filled the wheel barrow completely full. There were a few more
scoops to get…and Nova pushed the wheel barrow and knocked it
over. After the stall cleaner got all the muck picked up again and
was leaving the stall, Nova kicked the wheel barrow.
I thought…oh no…we have to find a place for her to be turned out.
So, Nova got to be turned out with the real horses. Horses that
live permanently in a pasture. Horses that are self-divided into
three separate herds in the large pasture (there are three round
bales in the pasture and the horses sort themselves out into three
groups! The pasture has real fence. In fact Nova’s mother, Sage,
is in this pasture!
When Nova first was let free in the pasture, the first horse that
trotted over to meet her was a buckskin fox trotter. They looked
exactly alike!
Nova galloped and ran and bucked. She met some of the other
horses. No one tried to kill her.
Nova is free!
Her ground training continues….
I’ll load some galloping pictures of Nova into the photo album and
you can see what Nova looks like at one year seven months.