Ace has been at Dave and Tracie’s “Crosswinds Ranch” for nearly two months now. Their four horses — Midnight, Louie, Classic, and Marahute — and my boy Ace have had the opportunity to meet each other over the fence, work in the arena together, and get to know each other through the bars of their stalls. Taking our time letting them get to know each other seems to have paid off, because putting them together in the pasture was pretty much uneventful.

Midnight is definitely the herd leader, followed down the totem pole by Louie, Marahute, and Classic. We put Ace out first, and then brought Midnight out.

Midnight took a look for a minute, cantered up to Ace with ears laid back, the two of them turned their tails towards each other …

… and then they walked away and started eating.

Next we let Louie out, who also went straight towards the grass. After a few minutes the three of them cantered off towards the end of the pasture … and went right back to munching.

We were just going to put the three boys out because we didn’t want them to get too jazzed up if all five were out, getting everyone running and stressing Classic’s weak and arthritic joints.

But the three of them were handling it so well, so we went ahead and grabbed the girls and tossed them out too. And they went right to eating. Everyone was comfortable enough to take some time to roll. The freshly-bathed Marahute enjoyed using her the grass and her damp fur to turn herself green.

We watched them for a while and then headed back into the barn to finish up chores. As it was getting dark, we heard a ruckus and Tracie could see out just enough to catch Midnight and Ace going at it. They were kicking a bit, and Midnight chased Ace into the wire fence. Fortunately, the fence has a bit of give, and the nearest post broke, and neither of the horses were hurt. Ace had a dust mark on his neck from the wire, but that was the only way we could even tell who hit the fence.

When the boys knew it was getting close to dinner time, they hung out near the gate and kept Ace in the back of the pasture, which didn’t seem to phase him much.

So, all in all it wasn’t too bad for their first time out together. After they’ve had some time to re-establish the pecking order in the larger space, we’ll put the boys loose in the arena together so that they can get used to coping in the smaller space when bad weather comes.