Rain, Rain, Gone Away....

...Left a Puddle in the Way

Actually, it didn't stop raining until early afternoon. Everything is pretty wet.

And I had a teacher's meeting after school, so I got home late.

And I need to go to the chiropractor to get adjusted before my "out of alignment" neck gives me a headache.

And my knee aches.

And I think I'll wait another day to ride.

The Boys look fine, but I think Tucker has upped the bullying against Chance again. The kid has been hanging out more by himself and when I pulled into the driveway, Tucker chased him off.

To his credit, Chance does not seem too upset by the whole thing. He has a pretty good self-image. Tucker, though, has delusions of grandeur, thinking he should be top horse. But that position falls to Toby who is a definite alpha. He is not mean, just powerful authority figure.

Years ago, when Toby was boarded out, my friend Stacie bought a horse from the yo. Turned out he was a rig, but at the time we didn't know that. So he was turned out with the geldings.
He gathered his herd and Toby gathered a rival herd. They grazed on opposite sides of the very large field. But every now and then one or the other would invade and trouble would start.

My PJ was part of Toby's herd and I didn't realize that turning him out without Toby was dangerous until one day he got beat up. I found out later that Stacie's horse had attacked him before, and Toby had always come to his defense. PJ was a big strong boy with a naturally cresty neck which, I think, always made other horses see him as a stallion. He was actually very gentle, though.

The barn manager told me that one day, he had seen Stacie's horse attack PJ and actually gotten him down. He had thrown rocks to break it up. He said too that Toby was really the "king" out there because he was the smarter fighter. Stacie's horse would rear up to strike and Toby would dive in underneath and nail him every time.

Another time, Stacie's horse got loose from the shoer and challenged Toby over the fence of the pasture. The shoer kept saying, "They're both stallions, they have to be. You should have seen how they were acting. It was scary."

Toby is definitely fully gelded, but he kept his dominant personality around the other horses, that's for sure. Nobody messes with him.