We've Moved!

We moved on Friday evening. The new BO was able to come a day early and I jumped at the chance. The faster he can get acclimated the better. The hauling went smoothly. I was relieved that he loaded into the 2-horse straight trailer just as easily as he's learned to get into the big 6-horse slant he's been to shows in. He unloaded fine but he was shaky and snorty and more nervous than I'd seen him in 21 months. UNlike 21 months ago, *I* was not nervous and I'm sure that was helpful for him. Though he was snorty and nervous he never really spooked. We walked through to the barn and I took him down the aisle that leads to Max's stall. All the horses can look out over their doors so Max became very excited but it took Junior a while to realize he was there. I took him to his stall and he rolled right away and drank some water and proceeded to flirt with Nike, the huge mare in the next stall, who then proceeded to flirt right back, much to Junior's delight. On his other side is an adorable little Mini named Red Apples. (the picture @ right shows his Bettie Page I gave him)He was given some lovely hay while the other horses were fed their dinner and he was content to watch them all very curiously when they went out to the fields for the night. He didn't fuss much, to my relief.
He's on quarantine for a few days so he was turned out alone for the morning in one of the sand lots and came in at noon. All of the fields and sand lots have shelters and automatic waterers and they look very well maintained.

I arrived in the afternoon today to find him looking adorably cheerful, hanging his head out of his clean stall and nickering to me. I spent some time cleaning out our tack area with Max's girls. We chose to go in the uncovered room closer to our stalls rather than the closed tack rooms that you have to walk through the arena to get to. It's not a very busy place so it wouldn't be a big deal, but it's also nice to have a TON of room all to ourselves. Other than some rarely used bins and trunks, we have a 12'x16' (or so) room to ourselves. The most immediate downside is that it is open to the indoor round pen and therefore has a nice coating of dust, but the area that Max's girls swept when they arrived 2 months ago is not bad at all yet so I think if we just keep up with it it'll be fine. When my tack-box-to-be is finished all of my stuff will be covered. I can always move to the other rooms later if I choose to. The area had been built as a farrier's area, but the farriers hate it so it has just been storage. The white squares are lights, but they're not functional at the moment.


After he ate his lunch hay (that's right, they get lunch hay!) I took him out for a walk into the outdoor arena and he snorted at things but walked up to and touched everything and walked right over the bridge so I thought he did really well. I let him eat some lawn for a while but it was so hot in the sun so I took him back to his cool fan and he drank water right away.

Then I went for a walk with Max and two of his girls along two of the trails. (That's Max on the right.) I cannot wait until Junior and I can explore them. He's not the keenest on trees (must be a Texan thing) so I'll be hand walking him through to start and we might not get that far before I head to MN/WI for my summer vacation month. I just want him to relax and take it slow. He was still showing some disgruntled school horse behavior before the move so I'd like to give him a chance to forget all those bouncy pokey yanky college kids and get back to the attention-whore horse that loves everyone and everyone loves. I still put a NO TREATS sign on his stall.

I asked Junior if he approved of his new surroundings and he replied .....