Bored Button

We haven't yet found a solution to our trailer problem, any suggestions welcomed!

My lovely sane moon is back. And behaving like a good boy again. Nothing much has happened but i thought I’d let you into the wonderful world of bored Moon. Firstly he loves his food, like any man does. But when he's licked every last inch of the bucket it becomes his favourite toy. He picks it up, flaps it up and down and throws it everywhere. He’ll stand for 10mins after breakfast and play. All fun and games for him but i sometimes have to trek a good 100m to go get it to fill it up again! 
I've even devised a game for both the boys to keep them occupied. After feeding them all I stack up all 6 buckets with treats in between then watch them sniff and lift all the buckets off to find the treats. Took a long time first time, not so the long second!

Moon entertaining himself whilst being tacked up

He also has a 'treats ball' one of those decahedron things you will full of food and then they push it around (or try to chew his way through the outside of it in Moons case) and the treats fall out. I put i t in for both of them to enjoy but poor Zonda (moons field mate) is not allowed near it before Moon. Even if Zonda has been nosy and is near the gate when it gets thrown in Moon will run across the field to nose it around first. Now Moon does not run voluntarily, he’s far too laid back for that but for the bright red ball, he will canter completely of his own accord, right across the field. Just to make sure he gets there before Zonda eats all his treats! 

Zonda or Houdini as we like to call him is Moons field mate. Moon is too socially inept to share a field with herd boss Polly who will kick anything within a 10 foot radius whether it was coming at her or not. He’d just wander up behind her dopily and then wonder why he his leg hurts so much as it's hanging off at the knee, so he is always kept separate from her and the girls. He used to live with darling Cleo who was the only one who accepted him as a friend when he arrived as a completely socially retarded creature who didn’t know how to groom another horse or how herd politics work but Moon loves to play to cure his boredom he likes to bite and buck and occasionally run. So does Zonda! Which gives rise to the biting game. An amazing invention that could only have been invented by two boys. You stand, face to face then bite each other’s neck. Hard. You don’t run away, just bite. It’s a bit like the horse version of 'slapsies'. occasionally when it gets really serious you rear up at each other to see who is the tallest (always Moon) but mostly it’s about who can bite the others neck the most. (You can see whey Cleo quickly grew sick of sharing a field with the boys).  Moon usually loses. Well in human terms loses i.e. he always has more hair missing and more cuts on his neck. He does seem to get Zonda a lot but he has no hair missing off his face, which is a shame when Moon is the one who has to stand in front of a judge wondering why my horse has gone bald in random places on his face, not Zonda. Maybe moon is too soft. That would make sense. . !

The Biting Game

 
Moons other favourite thing to do, apart from eat play with his bucket and the biting game is rolling. He loves it. Especially after getting showered off after riding. However he has a rather special way of doing it. He paws all the mud or dust up lies down and rolls one side, all very normal. Then he sits up, just like a dog, walks his front legs around his bottom like he’s doing a sitting half pass and collapses to scratch the other side, it is so funny. Sometime he just sits and surveys the world, possibly imagining what it would be like to be a dog and live on the sofa and not have to do any real work! It’s a shame he’s too big for the house. He'd love it!

Dog Sitting

 The Boys Just Chilling Out

 

Too Big for his Boots and his Box

Another long pause between posts, we were very busy going places and seeing new things and moon has been sharing his attention with Polly, so amongst tack cleaning, horse washing trimming, mane pulling hitching and unhitching an update has been severely neglected.

But recently all Moons adventures have given him a big head, sorry and even bigger head. His Extra Full bridle will attest to the actual size of his head.
Going places, being clever and jumping things and behaving well has given him the idea that he may know better and that cantering wildy round the field ignoring the midget pulling at him is his way of putting his view forward. Clearly it’s much more fun than poncing around in a dismally slow trot with your nose tucked in, or dressage as we humans like to call it. So after a few cancelled lessons and finally pinning down the busiest dressage trainer in the area only to be told "you’ve completely changed the way you ride him, and not in the right way." We have gone back to basics. And a flash. And along with a jumping amnesty, it seems to be working. Sane moon is back. Until he gets tired, and then leaping right towards the gate with his head pinned to my left leg is very appropriate. Well it gets the message across. “I have had ENOUGH"

Moons short attention span is becoming a little issue. We talked last time about loading. Now when he’s IN the box he is calm and relaxed, and likes his treats he gets for going in. But the novelty soon wears off. When we pull away he whinnies madly to Little Zonda who is only 3 and so desperate for adventures of his own he runs up and down the fence whenever anyone gets to go in the trailer. A journey of 10-20 minutes is fine, any longer or any bumpy lanes, or traffic lights and he gets bored. Bored bored bored. In order to communicate this to anyone in the vicinity (in case passing pedestrians see his poor little face stuck in a box and decide to free him) he bangs the floor. Hard. Again. And again, and again. In fact it’s becoming a problem, he's scraped the rubber flooring so it’s got a dip in it, and his reach is so far that as you look in the wing mirror you can see the jockey door bulging out intermittently. It will only be a short time before it flings open in transit and he terrifies himself with the moving floor outside. So a solution must be found, i have tried putting him on the left hand side but that only saves the paint in the jockey door the floor still needs rescuing, and quickly!

So far the only solution i have come up with is a boot. A poultice boot on one hoof will not scratch my floor as badly and hopefully will not take any more paint off the walls! Not sure how this will go down with moon, he's not too keen on things attaching themselves  to him, i am not sure he will like me putting his foot in a trap and THEN making him go in the trailer. If anyone has anymore less ‘special’ solutions please let me know!