Spencer in Miniature!

One foggy morning, I went outside to feed the horses. I looked out at the herd and I didn't see Spencer. I saw a horse that looked like Spencer, but he seemed smaller than the other horses.











I looked and looked. Were my eye deceiving me? Did I need new glasses? How could this be?





As I got closer, I could see that Spencer was about the size of a Shetland pony. Very cute and easy to manage. I thought of all the benefits of this new size. Less hay! Smaller poop piles!


I could trim his feet without getting killed! Yea!


But I missed the Big Spencer! I was sad and started to cry.

I cried so hard, my eyelids filled with tears until I thought they would burst. I could hear someone in the distance "Open your eyes! Open your eyes!"

So I did! And I realized I was dreaming.

This is Buster. A new pony that I brought home last week against my husband's better judgement of course! I had been looking for one for my granddaughter and I found this little guy on Craig's list. He looked so much like my big guy, I had to have him. He's very sweet and easy for kids to handle even though he's only 4 years old. And he's NOT a rescue! How about that!

I had you going for bit there though...didn't I?

The Thrill is Gone, Baby. And so is the snow!

Spencer is really glad the snow is gone.




















So is Sophie.














The dogs loved it!















Especially Mae!





The snow made Cricket's foundered feet feel better. She liked it.

But we're glad it's gone and it hasn't been raining for a few days. In fact, the sun was out today and that was nice.

Snowy Days

This is Patch! I think you've met him on my blogs before. Well, HE is at the top of my poop list right now.


He's my escape ar-teest.



See the loafing shed and paddock behind him? He frequently checks the door to that paddock with his muzzle, trying to slide it sideways. Once out, he'll even go to the stall door right beside it, and slide that door open to check for any goodies that might be in there, or to let the resident horse out. Currently, Cricket the foundered horse is in there and even with the door open, she's not going anywhere.

I'm forgetful! And go in and out that paddock door often. Sometimes he does get lucky and finds that I've forgotten to latch it. He got lucky the other night just before we went to bed. It was bitterly cold out. Of course.

The dogs were barking their heads off and Rich went out to see what was up. There were a couple donkey's in the front yard headed for the road. All the others where headed down the dead-end (thank goodness) road. The 3 P's - Pearl, Peach, Patch, the two mini mules, Trudy and Mouse, and Harley the moxy mini horse, with Spencer bringing up the rear.

They looked like a little parade of breeds, sort of. I wish I had gotten a picture. It was pretty cute to see little Harley's tiny rump swinging as he clip-clopped down the road next to Spencer's great big rump bumping along.

Rich and I jumped in the gator and went in hot pursuit after the little group of escapees.

When they heard us closing in on them, they turned off the road and went frolicking around in the neighbor's yard whinnying "Whoo hoo!" to each other. There was snow on the ground and they were slipping and sliding, bucking and farting and in general having an "Equines on the loose party!" Except Spencer. He just seemed confused.

But when they realized their escape wouldn't produce any greener grass for them, they turned to the alfalfa in the back of the gator and followed us home.

That was Spencer’s first escape. When he initially came here to live, I had nightmares of him getting out - a giant, agressive stallion, tearing around the neighborhood, kicking and biting all the little children who ran out to greet the big horsy.

Well, it’s finally happened, but he’s no longer a stallion and it was after dark so no kids running around, thankfully. He is still unruly at times, but a friendlier giant than before. He seemed unsure about why they were all traipsing down the road without a human in the around, so he just kind of followed Pearl's lead, the psycho Arab.

Rich’s comment was, “Oh good, two skitsos (sp) running around loose together. That’s great.” He sees the positive side of most situations like that:0)

Well, that was then. Today, everyone is safe and sound and enclosed.

(Pearl and Spencer are a couple now.)

This is Spencer’s feeding station. He is fed separately from the other horses normally because he has different nutritional requirements (he eats a hell of a lot more than the others) and he is a bully at feeding time.



This is a good plan for him also because he is very claustrophobic and has issues with going through narrow passage ways. If he has to go between two objects (the squeeze game for Parellites) he freaks out a bit and moves very fast and sometimes slides or trips over his hind feet.

(This is the paddock doorway that Spencer has to come through to get to his food and the one they all left through on that exciting evening.)

He’s a big uncoordinated boy. Is that a draft thing? He’s not real nimble on his feet when he has to move quickly. Forrest is half Clydesdale and he actually moves with the skills of a talented quarter horse, but then his not as big boned as Spencer either.

Anyway, we’ve been having fun in the Winter Wonderland, we call, the Rainier Hoof Recovery Center!

Quiet Times

Spencer, just hanging out.


Not much to report with Spencer these days. I’ve been super busy and our grandkids were visiting over Thanksgiving weekend. (Did you notice the mini mule tucked under Spencer's neck in the photo? That's Minnie Mouse. There is a story about her on my website. She's quite a gal! She came here over a year ago with similar personality issues that Spencer has! An after shot of Mouse is on the homepage.)

Spencer has had a few human visitors and has tried to nip each one. One lady was smart and offered him a couple treats and he thought she was okay after that.

Since I haven’t had time to play with him much lately, he reverted back a bit to that nippy boy with the bad attitude that he came here with. I swear, you really have to stay with these horses that come with emotional baggage. Just when you feel like you’re making huge progress, they let you know that their past experiences are always just under the surface.

Still, I know we’ve made progress!

I had to get after him a couple times for agression, and I lost ground in the trust department for a few days. This is a horse who is very sensitive, yet kind of a bully. He gets sad, he pouts, holds a grudge, his emotions are so incredibly human-like. I guess it's true for all animals though, if you pay attention and notice them. But most especially dogs and horses probably because they live so close to us. Bird people say the same about them, and I've seen it with my sister's birds.

Anyway, as soon as we spend more time with each other again, I’ll take pictures and keep you posted.

Just feeding him these days and keeping weight on that ginormous ribcage has been challenging. I have to feed him so much more than the others it’s just amazing. He’s like feeding 3 or 4 normal sized horses.

Oh, Rich finally got around to fixing the fence rail that Spencer kicked out a while back because of this!


Boomer got his big ol' head is stuck in the fence! He's lucky I found him a soon as I did because his fuzzy little butt was exposed for any of the other horses to take a crack at...excuse the pun.

Boomer likes to stick his head were it doesn’t belong. If we put fence panels up he constantly rearranges them which drives me nuts!

More soon! I promise! Thanks for staying with us.

Pat

The Spencinator On Video

I apologize for not posting anything about the Spenster in awhile. I get busy and get behind on the blogs. Not too much exciting news to report. He's been spending some leisure time lately, just hanging out with the other horses and feeling more comfortable with his "normal-horse" life. Oddly, he and Forrest (the one horse who is nearly his same size) are not getting along all that well lately, but they are pastured together with almost all the other equines now. The two of them got into a big hindleg confrontation which seemed to end in mutual respect for each other. Amazing to see two such big horses battling it out. It didn't last but a half minute, but the noise was deafening! I wish I would have had my camera! But I was screaming at them to STOP! STOP! STOP! Like I was going to put a stop to those two big boys going at it. It's something they had to get through and now they are being civil to each other. Spencer is so sweet and cordial to the other smaller geldings. He allows them to move him out of his food without a ruckus, unless he's really hungry. He's a bit of a chauvinist with the mares though. Mares don't get the same tender courtesy as the geldings. Go figure. Anyway, I took a couple videos a few days ago when I was out in the pasture goofing around with the camera. Do you remember that Spencer ran untouched in a field for 2 years because no one could catch him? I didn't mean to be a smartass in this video, but I guess I kind of am. I'm such a dork in this, but I still had to show you. I just can't help wondering why he was so challenging in the past. You can hear my hubby and our neighbor, Jim, working on the fences. They've been doing an awesome job.

Yes, his front foot was bothering him when I took this. I think he has another abscess brewing. But I'm still not making much headway with hoof handling. I figure if we work on it a bit every few days (that's all the time I get for him) and while we work on other things, the hooves and the trust that goes with allowing me to work on his hooves will come together. For now, he's maintaining his feet on his own as he always has. If his hooves ever were trimmed in the past, as I were told they were on a regular basis, he had to have been forced into cooperating, because he offers no cooperation willingly. So either most of what happened in his past was completely fabricated, or I don't want to guess what they put this guy through to get him to cooperate. On another note! Do you remember how I couldn't get near him while he ate his food? He would try to bite and kick me. Check this out? This boy is an eating machine! You can see, I'm still a bit jumpy around him at times. But he's getting SO MUCH BETTER!

Is that Trigger?

Well, the big guy has been really busy for the past few days. I have so much to fill you in on and so many pictures to share!
So he had been behaving like a pretty bad boy. The last post was about busting the fence and my concerns about working with him while he’s eating.

The fence rail he kicked out when I touched him on the shoulder while he was eating. Dude! (And I don't say "Dude" very often, but...) Dude! I'm so thankful I was not on his side of the fence when he reacted!
And he also did THIS when he got into a fight with Forrest during which he gave Forrest a big fat hock!

So for the last 4 days, we've been busy! I worked with him on the food issues, and using a suggestion from Kacy, (thank you so much) I brought a wheelbarrow load of hay and grain into the arena then brought him in with me and we both came upon the food together!

The things I did to work up to that and then taking him to the food, made a huge difference in his eating behavior.

And we did some ground work! This tarp was very scary at first!

You can kind of see how bad his feet still are. We worked on picking up his feet as well. He's making some progress. I'm certain he's never had his hooves trimmed in his life. He has no clue as to how to pick up his hooves. He's like a baby whose never had his hooves handled before.

LOOK...where I'm standing! Woo hoo!!

I'm so excited to be taking a picture from this angle. He's like, "I will allow it this once." What a pill.

Really, I've discovered that he enjoys being fussed over. Initially, I couldn't get close to him with a brush in my hand. He acted like it was a weapon. Isn't that sad! And NUTS! Now he loves it. I'd like to think that when he was a baby, someone pampered him a little bit and the memory of that is returning. (making stuff up in my head again...)

I spent some time brushing him and working on his horribly tangled tail. He seemed to like that. His trust meter is really climbing! I'm so proud of him.

We were doing so well, that I figured we need to take it to the next level and what else could I do than pull out Forrest's draft saddle to see what he thought about that. He can buck!

What's this?
You think you're going to put it where?

The pad is accepted without much fuss.
Now how the heck do I get this heavy thing, clear up there? (His hind leg looks relaxed doesn't it? I wonder... :0)

It wasn't easy, but I got the heavy saddle on his back. I carried it around on my head for awhile, trying to figure it out, then I had to stand on a mounting block to git r' done. Now all I have to do is attach the girth on and cinch up!
Trigger...on steriods!

Here he is, all cinched up! The bucking fest is over. (Sorry no pictures of that, I was busy saving my life.) He just got a little excited. Then I let him hang out and eat hay with the saddle on. He got comfortable with it. Then he became frightened of it when I went to take it off. It fits really well, but taking it off took some imagination to get done safely. For that, once again, I put a fence between us. It's not that he's so much worse than other horses when he gets reactive in situations like this, just so much bigger when he does react. It's like avoiding an earthquake! You can't really!=0) So it's best not to be find yourself in the same region when it happens.

I've been worried about his teeth so last night, our friends from Performance Equine Dentistry stopped in on their way home to give my big buddy a once over. Dick and Kathy Vetter are awesome. They even gave me a deduction as a donation toward Spencer's rehabilitation.



It was getting dark by the time we got started. Spencer was pretty good, but not the easiest patient Dick has done, or the biggest (but we had to work on him outside their clinic trailer) Even after he was sleepy, he was a bit of a giant snapping turtle. We'll work on his behavior with others. So far, he can only handle one human at a time.

I told Dick he deserved an award for getting this guy done. He said, "No, you deserve an award if you can make a good horse out of this guy." Thanks Dick! I will.

I've heard that horses won't purposely hurt people they like. I think it's better to say, horses won't purposely hurt people they trust. I'm getting the feeling that he no longer wants to hurt me. Once we get past that, then we can really go to work on somethings.

It will take time to let him know that all humans can be trusted. He just had some bad luck with a few in the past. I keep saying, he seems like such an unhandled horse, but I know also that he was handled, but over-handled when he was.

He just doesn't trust people and is so accustomed to being bad when he didn't have a studchain on his face and being good when he did because of the amount of pain that could be inflicted on him if he stepped out of line.

That's the horse I met, a few months ago. I've only used a rope halter on him. I was leading him back to the pasture today and it was like leading a tame pony. I flashed back on the enraged bull elephant that I was leading (with 2 leadropes) from the stall to the paddock early on. What a difference!

So this afternoon, I brushed his tail completely out! While he was eating!

Friends who have met Spencer and who know how lazy I can be, and who saw that his tail was one thick mat when I brought him home, threatened to shoot me if I cut if off! Still, I thought about it.

But I didn't. I spent several hours on it and well, it was so worth it...don't you think?


Back out with his friends! What a moose!

Thanks everyone for your support and suggestions! As you can see, I listen to each one and find what works!

Focus on the Good Stuff!

So a few posts ago, I exposed a comment that wasn't very nice. I did that because I wanted that rude person to know that I wasn’t the only one who could see how mean-spirited he/she is. That was a negative thing for me to do. I get one mean comment and put it out there for all to read and comment on.

Why am I not highlighting one of the many gracious, positive, kind-hearted and thoughtful comments? Those are the comments that are way more meaningful and helpful to me.

All the wonderful comments sent to my blog touch me in a special way and I’m so flattered that some of you take the time to tell me how you feel I’m doing with Spencer and my other rescues. So! Here is a posted comment that really made me feel great!

bhm has left a new comment on your post "Fittin' In!":

Pat,
Poor, sweet little Arab. I’m very happy that you have her. Love your collection of equines. I have a soft spot for donkeys and their cute little faces and fuzzy ears.

Wow, Spencer is really doing well. You’ve done a great training job that most trainers wouldn’t have attempted. Spencer is well on his way to discovering his inner cuddle-pony. I knew it was in there somewhere.

I can’t believe that some idiot sent you that horrible post. You look really cute in your photos with Spencer so I guess they are just jealous. Besides, there are many of us who know what a beautiful spirit you truly are.


That's so uplifting to read! And the best part of that comment was that she too feels there is an "inner cuddle-pony" in Spencer somewhere just waiting to be let out.

I think that very same thing! Even as aggressive as he can be sometimes. I know I just have to find the right way to get to his "inner cuddle-pony"

Horses like Spencer remind us of how we tend to take our wonderfully tame and accepting horses for granted. While they are lose in the field or munching on hay, I can walk behind my other horses without fear of getting sent to the moon. I can run my hand across their bottom and rub and pet them and they are fine with me being so close.

To give you an idea of what Spencer is capable of, I have to share a “long” story of what happened with him just yesterday afternoon.

I’ve mentioned his food aggression in past posts. He will allow me to deliver the food, but then I’d better leave the area, quickly and quietly with no attempts at touching him. I’ve been feeding him with the other horses and spending extra time cuddling with them so he can see that. It sounds silly and maybe it is, but I feel that horses can learn from watching. They pick-up bad habits from each other!

I have so many questions about him. What would cause a horse to become this way? Did humans make him this way? Was he born like this? Or did other horses do this to him? Why does he let Patch eat hay with him, when I’ve seen him kick the tar out of his best mare for trying to share hay with him? It’s confusing and I’m always having to work at reading him, which has been a real learning experience for me. I love it!

Grade school teachers might complain about the difficult kids in their class, but those are the kids they gain the most teaching experience from, don't you think?

We learn the most from the difficult horses too. Pearl was a wonderful teacher for me. I learned so much from her, as frustrating as those lessons were.

So yesterday, I decided to work with Spencer on this very dangerous behavior of his. He was in the paddock just inside the board fence. The fence-rails are hefty 2x6’s and are fastened to the posts with 3.5” lag bolts. [Not nails. Bolts! My hubby has skills...and fence building is one of them;0]

I put grain in to a tub and pushed it to him under the bottom rail of the fence. He started eating. I knelt down and chatted with him and reached through the fence to give him a scratch on the shoulder. The second he felt my hand on his shoulder, he kicked out with his hind leg so hard that he split the fence rail like it was made of balsa wood, and one of the lag bolts shot out and landed on the ground next to me along with several splinters of wood.

Okay...WOW!

(If right here, you’re wondering if he has vision problems. No, I don’t think so, but I’ve thought of that as well.)

Yes, I may have surprised him a little. I agree, his reaction was way over the top and smarter people than me would likely see that reaction and go get their gun and be done with him.

But let me explain. I did this in a controlled manner. I was aware of his probable reaction and kept myself safe. I actually wanted him to react, because horses, like humans, learn from mistakes. I’m aware of what he’s capable of, still the power of that kick surprised me a little bit.

In the past, the human response to this behavior would likely have been to try hitting him as punishment. Which, in my opinion, would only convince a challenging horse like him that humans can’t be trusted and next time he should try to be more accurate with his aim.

I was impressed with his powerful leg and rather than get excited or chase him or raise a hand to him, I simply pulled the tub of grain back under the fence and looked at him. And he looked at me. I'm sure, in wonder of my reaction. No fuss, no yelling or jumping, or running at him with a whip.

Just oops! That little outburst just cost you something you really like.

For one, I think whacking that board as hard as he did, might have hurt a little bit. I hope so anyways...:0)

For another, the response to his behavior was immediate. The food disappeared. That’s way more effective and immediate than trying to wallop him. A tactic that isn't fast enough to make a point, if I could even reach him. And that’s what he’s accustomed to - the lame and absurd responses of humans to his temper tantrums.

Now if I was an alpha mre and could nail him in his ass with both hind-cannons or attack him with a vicious hide-ripping bite...he would learn to respect me. The problem with that is he’d also be fearful of me. So that won’t serve my purposes either. (Besides, putting him with with vicious horses in an attempt to humble him has been tried and well, I can't see that it helped him much, just left a bunch of scars on his handsome body.)

Horses know we are weak compared to them, and horses that have been beaten quickly figure out that we are nothing, when we approach without a weapon in our hands. Spencer knows this too, and yes, he sometimes challenges me when I attempt to approach him unarmed.

Back to yesterday. After losing the food, he allowed me to reach over the fence and scratch and rub him. I didn’t punish him at all. I got a brush out and brushed him. (I touched him.)

Then I gave him his grain back. While he ate, I continued rubbing, scratching and brushing him. He was okay with me doing that. I acheived acceptance in one session, from the opposite side of the fence.

Because he’s so dangerous at times, much of my initial handling has been with a fence between us. With each lesson in acceptance, I come to his side of the fence. It’s just safer that way.

So yes! It’s happening. I don’t believe he needs to be put down. With every new learning experience, he seems to figure things out very fast, especially when I approach him with kindness rather than cruelty.

He gets kindness…and he doesn’t forget. If I thought there was no hope for him changing to a safe horse, I wouldn’t put a life or limb in jeopardy. I would (will) put him down. I want to someday, be able to get close to his bottom, while he's lose and eating, without the worry of getting kicked.

Because, I too, just know the inner-cuddle pony is there. I’m willing to bet my fences on it!:0)




Thank you again for all your encouraging words. Spencer and I just love you for it!

Pat

What I learned: When you expect a horse to "connect the dots" there can only be one or two.