Chewie has been in heat for the past several days. What this means is that she is quite interested in flirting with the gelding in the next pasture. And, she is not overly interested in training games or enrichment games.
She’s still happy to eat her breakfast when I visit in the morning, and we’ve been working a little bit on cleaning and trimming her feet. But, we are holding off on working on new tasks, as her attention span is short.
My highlight for the past week is that Chewie and Twinkle are becoming much friendlier with each other.
Before I leave, I generally spend 10–15 minutes scratching Chewie. If Twinkle comes over, I give her some scratches, too.
Last week, Chewie and Twinkle learned that, if they were polite to each other, I could scratch both of them at the same time. However, if either of them touched the other one, there would often be some squealing and nipping.
It’s been fun to see their interactions change as they become more comfortable with each other. Over the past several days, I have started to see just a bit of mutual grooming. (For my non-horse friends, mutual grooming is when two horses scratch or groom each other at the same time.)
You can see a bit of this behavior if you look at the bottom right photo in the collage below. I’m scratching on Chewie’s back and on Twinkle’s neck. Meanwhile, Twinkle is scratching on Chewie’s back.
Both horses are quite itchy as they shed out their winter coats. So, it’s a great opportunity to use scratches to help the two mares bond with each other.
No comments yet.