This evening I fed the horses a flake each an hour before their supper, because, with the time change, they think they should be fed at 4 pm, not 5, and I’m easing them into the winter feeding schedule (I need light in the barn to measure their evening feed, and there’s only sunlight or a flashlight.)\u00a0 I gave them 45 minutes (usually enough for a flake of hay) went out and did not see a horse in the south barn lot (missed the Spotted Hay Bandit.)\u00a0\u00a0 Tigger wasn’t in the south barn lot.\u00a0 Rags had camped out in the SE corner, where he was hoovering up Tigger’s leftover hay.\u00a0 Thinking I was safe from interference, I went through the barn, closed the west barn gate (Tigger whinnied, but I beat him to the gate) , turned around to come back in and there was Rags.<\/p>\n
My options were to leave Rags in the barn lot while I measured out the feeds, and took them out, or reinforce my rule that horses had to be outside while I prepared their feeds.\u00a0 (Their evening feed consists of a measure of feed-through wormer, a weighed out amount of Purina Strategy pellets, and a quarter cup of Formula 1, a horse supplement.\u00a0 Each animal’s feed is measured into a plastic container with the horse’s name on it, except for the Formula 1 that’s poured over the top after their feed is poured into their feed pan. )\u00a0\u00a0 Opening the gate to drive Rags out risked letting Tigger back in.\u00a0 But\u00a0 I decided that was my best strategy because Rags is very hard to keep to his own pan of food once I put food out.\u00a0 Rags looked at me; I looked at Rags.<\/p>\n
So I went back in the aisle and picked up Mr. Dressage Whip, saying OUT, OUT, without looking at Rags, as I walked to the gate. \u00a0 Rags will not usually go out unless I have Mr. Dressage Whip and wiggle it\u00a0 in his general direction.\u00a0 This time Rags *followed me* almost to the gate, and when I opened it and said “OUT” again, out he went.\u00a0 So I said “Good PONY!, good boy!” in my most loving (I think) voice,\u00a0 hooked the chain on, swept out the part of the barn with stall mats, started the water hose in the water tub, made up the feeds, and\u00a0\u00a0 carried them out to their usual spots–Tigger in the barn, on stall mats; Rags in the south barn lot on the ground.\u00a0 Let the horses in; they went to their appropriate spots and started eating.\u00a0 Then I went back through into the aisle, picked up two more flakes of hay, and walked them down to the far end of the field and dropped them about thirty feet apart.\u00a0 When I turned around, Tigger was coming out.\u00a0 Rags, by then licking Tigger’s feed bowl for any “flavor” came out too.\u00a0 Back in the barn I shut off the water, hung the hose on the fence, put the carrier plastic things into the feed room (and, I now realize, forgot to bring in the measuring cup for the supplement…again…<\/p>\n
Both horses are smart but\u00a0 in different ways.\u00a0\u00a0 It’s fun to observe.\u00a0 Rags’s smarts nearly always involve “How can I get more food?”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
This evening I fed the horses a flake each an hour before their supper, because, with the time change, they think they should be fed at 4 pm, not 5, and I’m easing them into the winter feeding schedule (I need light in the barn to measure their evening feed, and there’s only sunlight or Read More…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[16],"tags":[17],"class_list":["post-558","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life-beyond-writing","tag-life-beyond-writing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=558"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":561,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558\/revisions\/561"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/elizabethmoon.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}