First, I’d like to apologize for my extended absence. My hubby and I were finally able to close on our house two weeks ago, so I’ve been in the process of finishing packing, moving, unpacking, and settling in. On top of that, it’s marching band season for my band director and his band, so I’ve spent the last three Fridays at football games. And (to add to the newness), I’ve started doing evening feed and bringing in at a local 25-horse boarding stable two nights a week.

In the midst of all this, I have been checking on Ace nearly every day, even if I just stop out for three minutes to pick his feet.

Back In His Old Digs

Ace is a happy boy these days. Dave and Tracie have a new permanent addition to their personal herd, bringing their total back up to four. Poke is a great little chesnut quarter horse; he was boarded with us for a while, and was recently given to Dave and Tracie. I rode him a bit when he was here before, and really liked him.

We have two main stabling areas at the barn. The first consists of four stalls in the end of the indoor arena, where Dave and Tracie’s horses live. They go in their stalls morning and evening to eat, and are loose in the arena during the day and night. When we had to put Classic down last December, Ace moved into her stall in the arena.

The second area is a small pole barn just in front of the arena where Ace lived when I first got him. It has two stalls and storage for hay. It has access from the stalls to a large paddock area that goes around the arena. Lately, Dave has had some horses in for training for a month or two at a time. They stay in the small barn and paddock, which makes management easy.

Now that Poke has come home and there’s a sixth horse in the mix, it made a lot more sense for Poke to live with Dave and Tracie’s other three horses in the arena and for Ace to go back to the small barn. Instead of sharing the paddock with the horses who cycle in and out, Dave split the paddock in two so each horse has his own space.

Ace seems quite happy with the new situation. He’s outside all the time, moves around quite a bit, and is even building up some muscle in his butt since his part of the paddock has a big hill. He doesn’t mind a bit being separated from his herd, but does still get some pasture time with them. I like having him out there where he has constant access to outside (which also solves my blanketing problem for this winter!).

Ace’s Elephant Memory

To my very great happiness, Ace has been 100% sound for nearly a month now. He got his feet trimmed last week, so they are starting to look much better and the bad frog has healed and grown back significantly.

Now that I’m starting to settle into the new house and schedule, I can start working my horse again. I started with some ground work over the weekend, to renew our communication skills and see how much he remembered after 6 weeks off.

It was like he had been worked yesterday.

He remembered how to do everything I asked, except to stop and disengage his hindquarters when circling. (and I can’t really complain about having issues stopping rather than going, for a change, can I?). Actually, he was doing the groundwork better than he had. We’ve honed some of our skills under saddle, so he moves his shoulders and does sideways much better on the ground now than he ever did.

This is the second injury that has sidelined Ace for at least a month, and both times he’s started right back up where we left off. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen another horse handle it quite that well.

Mostly, I now need to work on re-conditioning him. I think he’s still weak in that right stifle, because although he’s sound, it sometimes makes that popping noise if he’s not using himself well.

I’m going to lunge him over the next week, and then get back in the saddle with long walks and slowly building up the trot and canter work. I hope this nice weather holds out a while longer so I can ride outside and get him back in shape before we are confined to the arena for the winter!