Settling in

Yesterday Barokko and T (the alpha) were turned out together. In the beginning, they were both very on guard, T wouldn't let Barokko even think about approaching the horses in the adjoining pastures. After a couple of hours they relaxed, started grazing next to each other, nuzzling, and T even let Barokko say hello to the other horses ;)

In the afternoon I took him for a short walk, but he was very tense, and didn't want to go away from the barn. When we started going back he couldn't get there fast enough, and as soon as we entered the parking lot in front of the stable he sighed deeply and relaxed. I'm going to let settle in better before taking him off property, he was clearly stressed by it, but I was glad to see that he realxed when he got back to the barn, he feels safe there.

This morning they were both calm when we turned them out, T just indicated that he was still in charge by putting his ears back once or twice, and then they settled down to grazing within a couple of minutes.

I'll have to get used to letting him get dirty now he's outside all day - I spent about an hour today cleaning up his mane and tail, and added lots of Cowboy Magic Detangler hoping that it'll help keep just some of the mud off :P

He loves the hay at AG, both today and yesterday morning he left breakfast in the manger, and was eating hay instead when I got there. I was a little worried at first, Barokko is not a horse known for being a picky eater, but then I noticed that every few minutes he'd go over to the manger, grab a couple of mouthfuls, and then go back to the hay ;) He still prefers beet pulp over hay, though, probably because it's more messy - he grabs a mouthful, sticks the tip of his tongue out between his front teeth, sucks the liquid out, and then chews the fibers that remain. In the process quite a bit of it runs out between his lips, and onto the floor, wall, manger, me, everywhere! *slobber and drool* :D

He's going to get a week or so without work to get settled, I'll try to get some rides in on other horses in the meantime so I can start getting back into shape - in the past 4 weeks I've been in the saddle a total of 10 times, 5 of them included anything faster than a walk, and only 3 would be considered real rides.

I thought I'd be back to normal in a matter of days, not weeks :/ There are indications that I may actually have had a fracture in the left transverse process of C4, despite it not showing up on the X-rays taken at the trauma center (has to do with the angles the X-rays were taken from). It doesn't make any difference in treatment at this point, whether it's fractured or not I'm not at risk of exacerbating the injury by continuing normal daily activities within pain limits and mobilizing the muscles in the neck/throat/shoulder region through physiotherapy. But it's actually kind of a relief to have a likely explanation for why it feels the way it does - if it's been fractured the bone should be healed after 6 weeks, so there's an end in sight (injury was 4 weeks ago yesterday).