Your Daily Dose of Freya

[Silverine]

My back is fine but my foot is broken. In two places. It started swelling uncontrollably last and around 11PM I decided I couldn't wait until morning to have it looked at and went to the ER. So now I'm in a splint and on prescriptions for pain and swelling with directions to call a foot specialist. Today is the first in baby's entire life that I haven't seen her in person and I'm quite upset about it.

As for conformation - I think she's decently put together. She's still unfolding so not everything we're looking at is accurate, but I like the angle of her shoulders so far and her haunches seem well put together. There are a few issues I see with her front legs but those are most likely because she's still gaining strength and isn't quite stable yet. I LOVE her little face. It is just too perfect. And her ears are to-die-for.

Yep! He's a Rocky Mountain Horse named Jet. He's such a good boy. I've owned him since 2012. He just turned 21 on March 1st. I don't have too many recent pics of him (focus has been elsewhere...) but here he is back at Christmas:

[Toadally]

She's so cute! I think it will be really interesting to see how her coat changes as she ages, she's going to be one pretty girl! I can't believe how big she looks either, I wonder if she'll be bigger than mojo?

This would probably be wayyyy down the line, but if you ever decide to breed Mojo again do you think you'll pick Pax again or a different stallion?

[KingstonDressage]

My back is fine but my foot is broken. In two places. It started swelling uncontrollably last and around 11PM I decided I couldn't wait until morning to have it looked at and went to the ER. So now I'm in a splint and on prescriptions for pain and swelling with directions to call a foot specialist. Today is the first in baby's entire life that I haven't seen her in person and I'm quite upset about it.

As for conformation - I think she's decently put together. She's still unfolding so not everything we're looking at is accurate, but I like the angle of her shoulders so far and her haunches seem well put together. There are a few issues I see with her front legs but those are most likely because she's still gaining strength and isn't quite stable yet. I LOVE her little face. It is just too perfect. And her ears are to-die-for.

Yep! He's a Rocky Mountain Horse named Jet. He's such a good boy. I've owned him since 2012. He just turned 21 on March 1st. I don't have too many recent pics of him (focus has been elsewhere...) but here he is back at Christmas:

Oh no! I hope you're foot heals quickly! Now that you say that I am not realizing how bad of an accident it really was. I'm so sorry that you can't see Freya either! I'm sure that Mojo will help her while you're away!

Jet looks super cute! I love his faint head marking. And wow- he is a little more grown up too. Do you use him for anything or is he a lil' companion pet?

[terrasunshine]

I hope you rest up well and heal well, Silverine! Freya is beautiful, absolutely gorgeous, and I am super jealous! Take care of yourself and I'm looking forward to more pictures of baby! Thanks for sharing this experience with everyone here, it was awesome to watch even if I came late to the party!

[Silverine]

03/28/2022

Hey guys! Freya is two weeks old today! Sorry it's been so long since I updated. Dealing with my foot has not been fun. It's broken in at least four places according to the first follow-up doctor I went to. But he refused to take more x-rays because I was paying out-of-pocket so I'm going for another follow-up in the morning with a doctor that actually takes my insurance.

Anyway, Freya and Mojo are doing great! At 5 days old Freya decided that humans were actually pretty neat and now she's as much of a pocket pony as her mother. Twice she has actually decided to stay with the humans instead of following her mother when she walked away. Today was one of those times and she only ran over to Mojo after we shooed her away. Then when Mojo turned back toward us Freya was like "people!" and actually cantered back to us. Silly girl.

Freya is also ridiculously smart and brave. You correct her once and she remembers. She'll try the "bad thing" again, but you can clearly see her thinking about it and waiting to see if the same thing happens. When it does she goes "okay, got it" and doesn't try again. And she remembers it between days. Yesterday she was in a really "kicky" mood. The first time she tried I gave her a little swat and she ran off for a second. Then she came back and tried again (more strongly) and I gave her a stronger swat with my hand that was holding her little halter (so the swat jangled a little, too). She went "oh crud!" and ran off and threw a mini fit. But she hasn't even tried to turn her butt to a person since. And she still came right back and was trying to groom me less than a minute later. We had similar experiences/results with her trying to rear on people to play with them.

The past couple days I've been working with her on the halter. Mostly I'll just be sitting down and holding it and we'll play around with it when she comes over. She'll lick and chew it and I'll wiggle it around and slip it over her nose and flick the straps at her just to get her used to it doing weird things. She absolutely does not care about anything I do with the halter at that point. Here she is playing the "halter game" with my mother:



She starts to care about the halter when I try to put the strap behind her ears. Usually at that point she gets a bit scared (or maybe just not interested in having something back there?) and pulls back and away. So usually I don't try that unless I have a friend around that can wrangle her. The wrangling is when we put one arm in front of her and one arm behind. I had to do this during her first three days just to handle her at all. During that time I taught her that if she's wrangled she can't get free by struggling and that if she stands still I will let her go. She has retained that lesson so that's still what we do when we need to put something on her - like her foal blanket because it was stupid cold the past few days. So whenever I want to actually put the halter on we wrangle her so that she doesn't learn to avoid the halter by running away.

Today we wrangled her once to put the halter on and she was fine. I let her wander around with it for a bit. She decided to lie down for a nap with it on.



I decided to see if she was okay with me coming over while she was resting - she'd gotten to be not okay with it for a bit - and she let me approach without issue. I took the halter off while she was lying down and she didn't react at all. Then I stood and walked away and she either decided it was weird and a little scary that the human was walking away so she shouldn't be on the ground, or she wanted to follow me. Either way she decided to cut her nap short and get up. I'm going to say it's because she wanted to follow me.

Then a bit later we were standing around and Freya was playing with the halter and I decided to see what she thought of me buckling it while we were just standing around. She didn't even flinch. (She did flinch later when I went to take it off, but one victory at a time. ) I'm just so amazed with how smart, willing, and trainable this little girl is.

[BlackOak2]

It really is such a gorgeous warmblood face.

[Silverine]

04/11/2022

Can you guys believe Freya will be four weeks old tomorrow? I can't.

And yet she's gotten so big! I don't know exactly how much she's grown in the last four weeks but it's a lot. On day 1 she could walk right under Mojo and there's no way she'd fit now. She's also getting increasingly coordinated.

This week in particular saw two very important firsts for the little one - her first time out with someone other than her mother, and her first hoof trim! On Friday I put Mojo and Freya out with Mojo's BFF, Dana. It went a lot better than I expected. Mojo really just wanted to eat grass and ignored Dana for the most part. Dana was curious about Freya but was sensitive to the fact that Mojo was protective and didn't try to push anything. Freya was nervous about the new horse. Eventually Freya did go up and sniff noses with Dana but only for a few seconds before running off back to Mojo. Still, quite successful.




On Saturday Freya had her first visit with the farrier. She was both better and worse than I expected. I knew she wouldn't be perfect because I haven't had a lot of occasion to work on holding her feet up while my own foot is out of commission. Still, she was great for her back feet - a little bit of wiggling but no thrashing or any intense bouts of trying to get away. I don't think she tried to snatch her feet back, but I wasn't the one holding them so I don't know for sure. Her fronts were a bit more of a problem, which I found surprising because I'd worked more on those. For those she kept backing away and at one point did go up on her hinds. But she settled eventually and we got her trimmed. Then she proceeded to give the farrier the mare stare of death. Poor little thing. The farrier said her legs look good - nothing that needs intervention right now. A little toed out, but that's how she's supposed to be at this stage. Her fetlocks are still a bit lax, especially the rears, but they should correct as she grows.

Yesterday I put Mojo and Freya out with my gelding, Jet. This was a bit more of an iffy move because Mojo and Jet generally aren't overly friendly with each other. But it went basically exactly the same as with Dana. Mojo only wanted grass, baby was nervous, and Jet knew better than to get too close. Freya and Jet also both had zoomie sessions. Freya had hers first during which she got a smack on the bottom when she decided to see exactly how threatening she could be about kicking me before getting in trouble. Then Jet decided he needed to stretch his legs as well. (Go to about 1:15 in the Freya video for the booty swat.)





After the zoomies I grabbed Dana and put her out with them as well. Dana also had zoomies but I didn't get them on video. Then she came over to me for pets and treats which caused Freya to whinny indignantly. Apparently I'm part of her herd and not allowed to interact with other horses. Or maybe she was worried for me. Whatever the case it was super adorable.

And just for fun here's a slow-mo video of the first time I captured a video with all of Freya's legs in the right place.

[Silverine]

04/11/2022 Part 2

I completely forgot the other super important thing Freya did a little over a week ago - she got on the trailer!

I decided to just see what she would do if I brought Mojo up on the trailer. It took her all of two minutes to decide to hop up there with us.



Then, when we were all just standing around doing absolutely nothing she hopped on the trailer by herself.



I could not have asked for a braver baby. Seriously - what baby decides (at less than 3 weeks old) to just hop up into the small, dark, echo-y metal box? Don't get me wrong - I don't in any way consider her trained to load on a trailer. But just the fact that she chose, of her own free will with no prompting or pressure from a human or another horse, to do this thing that is generally considered one of the scariest for a horse says so much about her brain. I can only hope that I can successfully foster a relationship between us where she continues to feel free and confident in making such choices. Because that's what I want - a horse that decides to do these things because it is interested and engaged, not a horse that does things because it thinks it will make the human go away or stop exerting pressure.

[BlackOak2]

That blanket! Has it gotten bigger??? Already??

Not that I'm telling you anything, but here's a few exclamations I made when watching those videos...

'Look! Just look at those flying lead changes!'
'Wow... already reaching like Mojo... and it looks like she's got more there to stretch too...'
'Awe... such a good little girl, and still such an attitude!' (this one when she tried to kick you and then came back apologizing after you swatted her)
'Jet's looking GOOD!. Funny the way he's acting like he's the daddy, being all proud to be the 'herd stallion' and Mojo's like... shove off, just mind your distance.'
'WOW... Jet can move! too... he's still got his edge, doesn't he?' 'Wait... what does this mean he was like during his prime???'

I already know how Mojo moves and Pax too... but I haven't seen Jet. The way we all have been speaking about him, I had the impression he was starting to slow down from his advancing age a little. You know, getting a little stiff sometimes in the mornings, maybe having an ouchie that needs to be stretched out a bit before getting to work in the ring... getting a good shake in before putting his mind back to work.
He certainly doesn't look like that in that zoomie video!


Looking back on all of those videos... I'm thinking she'll spoil you rotten with her abilities and just thoroughly ruin you for any other horse. Makes me wonder how far she can actually go.

[Silverine]

Everyone keeps saying that she has more white on her, but I disagree. I think it's her getting bigger, rather than more white hairs growing in. Here's a side-by-side of her white at two days old vs. today at four weeks:



I have also noticed her lead changes. She's been doing those since day 1. I've only seen it in the front so far, though. Actually, I take that back - I've seen it in the back, but never both at the same time and she usually leaves the back alone.

I don't know if she's "reaching" yet, or if her legs are just that long. But I'm trying not to be overly "omg, look at my baby!" and temper my opinions a bit knowing that I'm going to be biased. I'm also not putting any hopes or dreams on her yet because she is still only a month old and we all know how horses like to hurt themselves.

She actually usually doesn't have an attitude with me. She is very cuddly and likes to hang out. She can get a little bit grouchy if I push a training session too long, but that just makes sense. She's a baby and her attention only lasts so long.

Here's some more pictures from today before I move on to Jet.









On to Jet - he is slowing down with his age, but he really lets loose when he wants to. A lot of what's going on with him is mental, though. He hates being a lesson horse. He just isn't the kind of horse to let you know it in such a way that makes you stop using him. But he really does hate it. He's a completely different horse when he gets to do more interesting things like go to the state park or run in the field. I'm hoping to get him to the beach this October since we didn't get to go last year. I think he'd have a blast.

And yeah, his trot is freaking gorgeous. Sadly it's also absolutely horrible to ride. His canter is weird, though. It's a gaited horse canter. You can see that a bit in the video - it's more four-beat than three-beat and his front end just isn't quite in time with the hind. It's not bad to ride but it's a little awkward and looks super weird.