This morning Rory wasn’t at her feeder spot for breakfast. I had 10 seconds of panic that she was missing and then saw Rory stride around the corner of Desire’s shed, now in the paddock next to the pasture she should be in. Huh. I immediately looked down to the gate panel at the bottom of the paddock to see if she had somehow finagled it open but it looked undisturbed. Rory cruised around the paddock, completely calm and expectant for breakfast while I walked the fence line until I discovered a break in the hot wire and some smushing at a spot in the fence. That *definitely* hadn’t been there the day before, so quickly I finished feeding, unplugged the hot box on the way by, and circled right back into the paddock to splice the hot wire back together and straighten the fence that best that I could. I grabbed her hay next and Rory followed me calmly out the bottom gate into her own pasture, trotted around, then settled to munching as I began to circle her with bated breath, ready for the inevitable wounds to show themselves.

Sure enough:

I could tell by my own reactions at this point that I’m on my second Danger Baby. Where the slightest scratches or swelling on baby Sheza used to throw me into a tizzy, I found myself heavily on the unimpressed, “Well done, I’ll clean you up and you’ll live.” side of things this time. Rory has been in the big pasture for almost a month now, sharing fence line with Blaze *and* Desire, and hasn’t seemed in the least perturbed at being “alone” in her field. I can’t quite see why she attempted to sprout wings and relocate, except that perhaps she’s a bit of a Funder and well, “..it seemed like a good idea at the time.”

She was pretty reasonable about getting it thoroughly cleaned and treated, for a yearling with about 4 months of handling who hadn’t been hurt before (that I know of). As of now she notices it’s sore but isn’t lame at all and seemed quite chuffed to get a mash out of the deal.

Gotta love horses!