Golden Scout

Scout is now doing really well. The diet she is on has kicked in faster than I have seen with any horse and she is truly glowing a beautiful golden colour. Her coat is incredibly shiny now and she is loving her new diet. Here is what she is currently getting:

She starts with a small handful of Copra to disguise the third of a cup of slippery elm powder in. This has a couple of cups of freshly brewed chamomile tea added to it. This is her favourite thing now and she polishes it off.

She has to wait 20 minutes till she gets her next course to give the slippery elm a chance line her stomach. She is very funny to watch during this time as she strides up to the fence where her feed buckets are sitting on the other side and looks at them then looks at me. She will then walk over and stand beside me, touch me with her nose and walk back over to the feed buckets wondering why I just don't seem to be getting the message and how could she make it any clearer!

After 20 minutes she gets her chaff which is a mix of lucerne, barley and oaten chaff (a small handful of each) . To this I add 1 tablespoon of brewers yeast (to deter the biting insects prevalent in this area), 1 teaspoon of organic seaweed meal, 1 teaspoon of macrobiotic sea salt, 20 ml apple cider vinegar and finally a herbal tea made up of peppermint, dandelion leaf, rosehips and garlic. I brew this fresh each morning for her and add it to the chaff. She also gets a capful of a special herbal nervous rehabilitation mix which helps calm her insecurities about being alone.

She gets a biscuit of grass hay split between her morning and night feeds. I was kindly given a hay net made out of a tennis net which has slowed down Scouts eating somewhat. I put extra rhodes grass hay in this (which she is not overly impressed with) but it makes her work harder trying to pick all the lucerne out and separate the grass. She is such a smart girl though. When I first put the net in there it took her all of about 20 seconds to work out that if she grabbed it with her teeth and shook it or pawed at it with her hoof, then all the good lucerne bits would fall out and she could eat them first.

I am very surprised at her change in coat and temperament. I have seen amazing changes in horses after 3 months but never this quickly. She was very healthy before she came to me so that may be why she took so well to the herbs and they impacted her so quickly.

Here is a picture of Scout taken yesterday.

She is overweight so I have had to cut down her hay so she does not put anymore on. Due to her colour, it is hard to pick up in photos just how shiny she is at the moment.

I have started working with her a little on hoof trimming, ground work and that sort of thing. Within minutes she was yielding her hindquarters, her shoulders, backing up and circling with very little encouragement needed. The only thing I have noticed is that she is not happy when she sees the halter so we are working on that. Really though, everything with Scout is just so simple to work through. I have never yet come across an easier horse to train.

I have had a number of friends come and visit her lately. She prefers it when people just ignore her and she can approach them and sniff them all over. It doesn't take her long at all to come and investigate someone new. She is not keen on stranger touching her face though.

There is a very tame magpie that lives around the property Scout is on at the moment. When you call him he will fly in from a tree and come and sit in the stable or paddock with us. He is just a delight and it seems Scout has taken to him also. I saw her the other day following him for a bit whilst he was picking for worms in the paddock. Then today I noticed he stayed on the ground right beside her whilst me and my friends were lavishing our attention on her. He was tilting his little head and looking up into her face and she would step carefully so as not to trod on him. I will have to try to get some video of them together. It is very cute! Here is a picture of Billy the magpie