Weekend

During the weekend I was able to spend all da Saturday and Sunday with Cupid, well in between doing the barn chores I do in exchange for my lessons. On Saturday we worked on ground manners and learning "whoa" and "walk." We also worked on standing tied. He does not like to stand still, either while being led or when tied. Previously I think he was only tied in his stall, not to a hitching post, so I wasn't sure what he would do and took it very easy only loosely tying him for very short amounts of time. But then I realized that though he moves around he doesn't pull back or do anything too bad, so it's probably better for him to be tied for longer and just get used to it. I also introduced him to cross ties. We went through them during his walks the last few days and I stopped and had him stand in the spot without actually being tied the first few times. Then I tried attaching the cross ties. He was pretty good, he took a few steps forward and a few steps backwards but didn't panic. On Saturday he also got a bath. He has very thin skin and didn't seem to like the water hitting him very much and picks up his legs if I put the water there. Sunday morning I went out to the stable and saw Cupid's right hind leg was quite swollen. Poor baby, I don't know what he did during the night to get hurt. I cold hose his leg, which he didn't really like very much and didn't want to stand and kept picking up the leg. But there was a giant puddle in the wash rack and he walked right in and stood in the puddle no problem. Then I put him in a stall with an ice boot on. We did this several times throughout the day. He was a very good patient and snoozed during most of the day. His neighbor, who was also inside because of an injury, was not happy to be in the stall instead of turned out and spend most of the day either whinnying, pawing/banging on the door, or flinging his blankets off the bar outside the stall.