Your Daily Dose of Freya

[Silverine]

Oh my gosh, guys. I can't believe the last time I updated was back in May. I'm very sorry about that. But life has a way of pulling us in different ways.

Firstly, Freya and Mojo are doing very well. Both are happy and healthy and everything is going well. No "but"s in that, they're really doing great. I'm good, too. Just wanted to get that out of the way in case we worried anyone. We're fine.

So, what have we been up to? Let's see if I can pick up where I left off.

Freya grew like a weed all spring and summer, as babies do. Shortly after my last post I got her a new weanling sized halter. That was too big on her for a grand total of maybe two weeks. She's currently still wearing it but it's gone from too-big to only-one-more-hole left. She's gone through three of those holes in the last three weeks. It's like she decided to have a growth spurt in only her head. Weirdo. d:

At the end of May we had a little adventure that I'll go ahead and quote my FB post on since I don't trust my memory type it out fresh:

Yesterday I was doing some ponying of the little girl when we heard a bunch of sirens and commotion on the road right next to the driveway. So I rode Mojo up to the road with Freya on lead next to us. This was to give baby exposure to the lights and sirens as well as to see if there was anything we needed to do. The girls were PERFECT. Mojo was alert to what was going on but was not worried and Freya took her cue from momma and only really cared that we were somewhere new that had GRASS and she wanted to eat it but couldn't because of the halter and lead.
These girls are so amazing and I'm grateful for them every day.

And some pictures from May 31st:



About two weeks after the last post the farrier came out again and Freya decided that she does not like him. She was a terror. She ended up swinging her head around in just the right way that she smacked the farrier at the top of his safety glasses and ended up making a decent sized gash at the top of his eyebrow. And in doing so she got us fired as a client. *sigh* But it's not all bad news. We started with a new farrier and the girls and I all absolutely adore her. Honestly I think we traded up. This new farrier has been working with us since two weeks after "the incident" and Freya has never offered to put a hoof out of place for her. Just good vibes all around.

Here's a pic after her first visit with the new farrier:


In early June Freya got to wear her first saddle. We had a little tiny baby western saddle sitting up in the loft that hadn't been used in goodness knows how long and was too far gone to be restored. I figured it was light enough that I could set it on Freya's back and see what she thought. She did not care. At all. So I grabbed my big fluffy western pad, which turned out to be longer than Freya's entire back at that point, and went ham. Pad, saddle, girth, she didn't blink at any of it.

Then, thirty minutes later, she decided she'd had enough. She threw precisely two bucks, decided that was too much work, and went to Mojo for some milk. That has generally been how she works: if something upsets her (and not much does) she'll throw a "fit" just long enough to see if doing so will get her what she wants. When it doesn't she gives up and goes about her life. I waited a few minutes after she settled down and then took the saddle off.

That first time is so far the only time I've put a saddle on Freya and I don't have any plans to do it again any time soon. Not that it was bad or she can't handle something tiny. But I do want to let her be a baby and there's no need to push her right now. I only did it the first time from curiosity and now that that's sated I'm good.

Apparently I took almost no photos during June. I can't say why because I have exactly 0 clue. I guess it just wasn't a very photogenic month? Here are the only two other pictures I took during that time.




So July rolls around and our local agricultural council is planning a horse show at the annual ag fair, like they did last year. I took Jet last year and wanted to take Freya this year for the exposure. The show was scheduled for the 23rd of July. At the same time I'm also looking for a new place for my girls due to a number of different factors. The main factor was a lack of care for Mojo, who often was left without hay for twelve hours or more. I found this completely unacceptable even if she wasn't nursing a baby.

Another issue was fencing. And Freya decided to make that issue worse by jumping a four-foot fence. #-_- She landed on her feet on the other side but took the top board with her. Here's the guilty party attempting to hide from the evidence behind her mother:


She hasn't attempted anything like that since so I'm hoping she has it out of her system. Or that hitting the top board scared her enough that she doesn't want to try again.

Anyway, I ended up finding a new barn that was only about five minutes further from home where the girls would have five grassy acres all to themselves (and it only cost half as much as our old place). So I decided I'd load the girls up for the show on the 23rd and then we'd head to the new place from there.

We did a lot of prep for the show during July. I wanted to enter Freya in three in-hand classes (adult showmanship, english halter, and trail in-hand) so we had to practice up to get ready. I introduced Freya to her first tarp and worked on our leading. We also started jogging over poles and working on learning the turns on the forehand and haunches. Freya seemed to really enjoy the work as long as I didn't make the sessions too long. Fifteen minutes was about her maximum. Which makes sense given her age.

Mojo and Freya during our super chill introductory session:


One thing that we ran into quite a bit of trouble with was getting Freya to walk over a "bridge". The bridge in question was really just a wooden pallet where the slats had been nailed on so that there weren't any gaps between them. The whole thing was maybe 2.5 feet wide and 3 feet long. Not big at all. But I was too pushy when I first introduced Freya to it and she quickly decided that she hated it. Completely my fault. I had gotten over-confident and then when she didn't really want to step on to the pallet on the first go I forced the issue and that was that. Freya was done.

We spent maybe two weeks working with that pallet, undoing that one bad experience. It was a good learning experience for me - I had to learn to let go of my expectations and really reward even the tiniest try. I would stand on one side of the bridge with Freya on the other and ask her to step forward. Usually she stepped sideways. But if she made even the tiniest move toward the bridge I released and rewarded. To get her to step on I actually had to pick up her front hoof and put it on the bridge for her. Then release and praise. She eventually got the idea that that was what I wanted and started pawing at the pallet. Eventually that pawing turned into a step, then two. Then once the front feet were on she'd just jump over with the back feet. So we worked on slowing down and actually stepping with the back feet. It was a frustrating and humbling experience but felt really good once she was actually stepping on the bridge calmly with all four feet.

During this time I ordered Freya a nice (but inexpensive) leather weanling halter for the show. I don't know what kind of weanling they sized that thing for but it was small. I knew the second I opened the box that I would be lucky if it fit Freya's head. Somehow it did, but it wouldn't for long and the show was definitely going to be the last day I'd ever try to have her wear it.

Here she is wearing it about 8 days before the show. (The little white flecks are not spots. I'm not sure what they are, but definitely not spots.)


So everything is set up - I've got the truck rented, Freya knows what I need from her, the girls have gotten their shots and coggins done, we're all good to go. Can you guess what happened next?

The show was postponed due to heat.

But everything was all set so I decided to load up like we were going to the show and just take the girls over to the new place.

I wasn't too worried about getting Freya on the trailer since she liked to get on there by herself anyway. So morning of I haltered the girls and snapped a lead rope onto Mojo. Mojo and I hopped up into the trailer and waited for Freya. She spent a minute or two running around outside the trailer, losing her mind about where her mother had gone, and then figured out where we were and followed us up. I hopped out and shut the door. The girls shifted around quite a bit but didn't seem overly stressed.

The drive to the new farm took maybe seven minutes since I drove a little slow. We pulled up, and I hopped out and closed the gates. Then I peeked in the trailer window to check on the girls. Here is their first look at the new farm:







We've been at the new place since then and the girls are very happy there. It's just the two of them, though I'm hoping to get one of my friends to move over there in the near-ish future. But it's super nice and peaceful. The barn is great - four enormous stalls and super clean - and the girls have free access to as much grass as they could want. And I have a lounge room all to myself so I can set up my stuff however I want.

The rest of July and August were fairly uneventful. Freya did get to try on her first sleezy on July 28th:



It was much too big for her.

And here are some pics from August 5th:




And I learned that baby mane hair goes curly as it grows out. So that was cool.



And then September rolled around and Freya turned six months on September 15th. (Can you believe it?)






On October 11th she got to try out her first big-girl blanket since we're starting to have some cold and rainy nights. She hasn't had to wear it overnight yet but I wanted to make sure that it fit and start getting her used to it.



And finally, finally, on October 29th, Freya got to go to her first show! I actually hadn't tried putting her on the trailer at all since moving to the new barn but she loaded right up like it was something we do every day. I guess starting with good experiences at two weeks old really sticks with them.

Here's baby and mama just after arriving at the show grounds:


The show was interesting. My friend came along to handle Mojo since Freya is not weaned yet. So we started off just walking around the outside of the arena and looking at everything going on. Freya was calm through all of this. She looked at the new things curiously but was not bothered by any of it. After walking around the outside of the arena I took Freya into it and asked my friend to wait on the outside with Mojo.

This proved to be a mistake. We made it down the long side of the arena and then Freya saw how far away Mojo was. She freaked out. I had never seen her like that before while I was working with her. She whinnied and pulled at the lead and kept trying to run back to Mojo. I was worried that she was going to pull the rope through my hands and run off. I kept circling her and working with her, not letting her just run off and trying to get her to calm down a bit. We slowly made our way along the opposite long side back toward Mojo. Slowly because I very determinedly did not let Freya rush. We circled over and over and over again. She reared and stamped and pulled on the lead but I was not willing to let her fit win. Luckily there were only two other horses in the ring and they easily avoided us. Eventually we made it back to the in-gate and reunited Freya with Mojo.

After the ring incident I realized that I just might need a little extra... let's say "oomph" for show day. Even back with Mojo Freya was still acting like a twerp. So we had our first ever "come to Jesus" meeting, as it's called in my area. Because that behavior is just not acceptable and none of my gentle techniques were getting through to her in the headspace she'd ended up in. So, for the first time in Freya's life, she got to meet a chain.

I looped the chain once around the noseband of Freya's halter. I tugged on that chain a grand total of two times. That's all it took to relate to her that 1.) I wasn't playing and 2.) life was more pleasant when she listened. We walked around a bit more with the chain on and she focused the whole time so I figured it was okay to go ahead and enter our classes.

Our first class was the adult showmanship. We got sixth out of six but that was completely my fault. I (stupidly) went first and completely flubbed the pattern. Oh well. I'll know better next time.

Our second class was english halter. There were eleven horses in the class. Freya was the only entrant less than six years old. I was the only competitor not in full ratcatcher, coat, etc. (I was wearing a nice polo with my good pants, tall boots, and show helmet. Not a bad turnout but not the same as full show gear.)

This time I let some other people go first so I could be sure of what I was doing. I was nervous starting out because all of the other horses were wearing bridles. And Freya didn't even have her nice leather halter because she'd outgrown it. I'd cleaned up her purple weanling halter as well as I could and it was definitely clean and shiny, but it was still a purple nylon halter. And we were still clearly the ugly ducklings here.

Still, we went up to the ring and took our turn. It was only her third time in the ring but this time Freya stepped in like we'd done it every day for her entire life. She stopped right with me at the first cone, jogged beautifully to and stopped nicely at the second, and set up almost square when I asked. Then she stood almost totally still for inspection and trotted beautifully with me when we moved off to line up. She was a rockstar.

We stood in line and waited for the last few entrants to go. Then the judge came along the line and looked at everyone again for final impressions. This time Freya set up perfectly square and stood like a statue as the judge went past. I honestly wonder if she wasn't just asleep during this part. But she was great and the judge moved on. Then we waited for the results.

I honestly didn't expect to place in such a large class full of adult horses and experienced handlers. They called first and I applauded politely with everyone else. Then they called second. And it was US. Freya, my Freya, my seven-month-old, not-yet-weaned, never-worn-a-chain-before Freya got flippin' SECOND.

I can't begin to describe how proud I was (and am) of her. My friend who was holding Mojo says she was watching my face and it took me a solid two seconds to realize they'd called our number. The first thing I did was give Freya an enormous hug. Then we trotted over and received her ribbon. I still can't believe she did it. I was in shock for the rest of the weekend.



We did our trail class after that and I have absolutely no idea how we did. It was running during the entire show so you could complete it whenever you wanted and I wasn't going to keep the girls there all day just in case we got a ribbon. I can almost guarantee we didn't because Freya had another meltdown just after we started. For some reason having to stand in a box of white poles was just too much for her. My theory is that every other time I'd shown her poles I wanted her to walk over them. So the fact that this time I wanted her to turn around inside of them was completely different and with everything else going on she just couldn't really process it. I eventually got her turned all the way around and we continued on with the course but it was so small that she couldn't really pick up her trot so she mostly ended up fast walking while I did the "jog in place" jog while slowly moving forward. But she was great with the tarp and the walking poles and they didn't have a bridge so it wasn't completely awful. We went back afterward to school the course and of course that time she turned around in the box just fine.

So that's our life up to this point. Some time soon Mojo should be going back to the old barn for a month and one of the horses from there will be coming to us so that Freya can actually be weaned but it's not super urgent so who knows when it will actually happen. Mojo has started telling Freya 'no' when she tries to nurse at times so it's definitely time to "cut the cord." But I know both of them are going to be super upset for at least a bit.

But yeah, that's what's been going on. To top you off here are the most recent photos of the girls (from Thursday), and a video of Freya and Arrow playing the field about a week ago.







Oh! And here's some comparison shots of Freya's spots at birth and how they were back in August:

[Gabby_Woodlark]

Wow. Just wow. Freya has progressed so nicely :0 From the last time you posted to now, she's grown so much.

Her mane has developed nicely, I love how wavy it is

And the second-place win- You must be so proud

Glad to see y'all are doing good

[BlackOak2]

... Ahahaha!!!
Second place! Take THAT adult horses!

She's looking great and Mojo's certainly looking satisfied with her work too.
And oh My Goodness! The spots that are starting to show!!!

You got your work cut out for you, but it sounds like Freya is just up your alley too. Shame that really nice leather weaning halter was so small though. It was a pretty one. But purple's her color anyway.

All in all, great, solid experiences. Congrats.

And thanks for the updates!

[Silverine]

So it's been a ridiculously long time since I gave a Freya update, and I apologize. Life has been ... interesting. And busy. P:

I'm back on HWO (for a little while at least) and found it hilarious how Freya in all of her yearling awkwardness looks exactly like some of my awkward Knab yearlings on HWO.




She even has the right tail length!

[Emlyn]

Oh my goodness, she has grown so much!! :p

They look almost exactly the same!

[Silverine]

Yeah, she's actually enormous. She measures 14hh at her withers last I checked (on her birthday) and 14.2 at her rump. I'm hoping that means she'll hit 16.2 when she's done growing.

[Emlyn]

Oh my goodness, she is going to be a tall girl

[~besthorsebreeder~]

She is so cute!!! The last time I checked in she had just been born, so the transition of her (I have been reading the posts since then) has been amazing! Keep up the updates, they are so cute!!!

[Silverine]

Not quite as long of a wait as last time.

First, a video of Freya getting a bath with my new sprayer. It works a lot better than I thought it would. And I'm sure Freya is glad that bathing now takes a fraction of the time.


Second, I've been introducing Freya to some more big-girl things, including short lunging sessions and wearing "belts". Here is a video of her second time with the "belt" (surcingle) and first time with the cavesson. She had definite opinions on the cavesson. (I apologize in advance if anyone is offended by me calling Freya "Fruit Loop" and/or "fruity" during the video. It is meant entirely affectionately.)