The return of Smokey

Max and I haven’t been up to anything special, but the reunion of two old friends is blog worthy.

Max’s dear friend, Smokey, is back in the pony paddock, and I am delighted!

We’ve had a couple of new arrivals on the yard, which meant figuring out who would be turned out with whom.

The original plan was that Max would join Smokey and his current field mate in his new field, and I was a bit worried about that. Not for horses not getting along, but a big field full of sumptuous grass troubled me.

Max has been doing well in the pony paddock. It’s small and slim pickings, which suits Max well. I’ve been watching his weight over the summer, and he’s maintaining good form, although with the rain the past couple of weeks, even the pony paddock has come up juicy, and Max is getting just a teensy bit cresty. Not in an alarming way, but enough to make me hesitate about setting him free in a huge field full of nosh.

Granted, the field is scrubby and quite good for horses in that it’s never been fertilised and is not rye grass so prevalent for cattle/dairy herd grazing.

On the other hand, it’s a huge field and my worry is that Max would gorge himself, like an unsupervised child let loose in a candy shop. The equivalent of a tummy ache for horses can be colic, and that is not to be taken lightly.

As it turns out, instead of Max going to Smokey’s field, Smokey has come to Max’s paddock. Smokey has put on a barrel load of weight over the past couple of weeks so a rearrangement in turn-out has been the result.

The three amigos are reunited! Brilliant! Less for Max to eat sharing with two instead of one, and better for Smokey who needs to be on Weight Watchers for a while.

I took Max out for the release, and then stood back and watched.

Max and Smokey had a good sniff and arched their necks at each other. The Boss stalked off in a huff: “Here we go, the two delinquents back together. How very tiresome”.

But Max and Smokey? Lovely to see two old friends gambolling again. On a light diet of shared grass, they’ll burn off what they eat in giddy play.

Very satisfying to watch happy horses being happy horses.