Change can be scary

This morning when I went out to the barn I discovered a pile of pony poop in the aisle but all ponies were in their stall. It was baffling. Was Buddy getting out and then going back in to his stall before I made it to the barn? If so, how long had this been going on? Ponies. 

The mystery was solved when G. mentioned that Buddy was in the aisle when G. went to get hay for the sheep and was returned to his stall. This was good, except that is meant I really and truly needed to do something about the pony stall door guard. It was on its last leg and I had been babying it along by tying all the broken ends together. Clearly, we had reached the end of that road. 

I had a little make it due moment this afternoon with the door guard and my sewing machine. Here is my finished product. 


I'm pretty proud of it. I restitched the two straps which connect the long, horizontal pieces of webbing. Then I dug out some upholstery material and lined the area between the two long straps to make it more difficult for a certain pony to stick his head through and break the upright straps. It feels significantly more secure now than when it was new. 

This evening moved the ponies across the aisle to their stall, gave them dinner, and put the door guard up. I then move onto getting things ready for the big horses to come in. All of a sudden, I hear a significant amount of scuffling from the pony stall and I notice Vienna is standing in the corner on high alert. Vienna moving away from food is usually something to check out. 

I walk over to see what was up. Nothing. Absolutely nothing was odd and there were no non-equine animals in the stall. Yet, Vienna still was still very much on high alert. 


It took me a bit to figure out what was going on. She was looking at me intently... 

Well, not so much at me as in my general direction...

Where the new door guard was. 

Yes, indeed, while she was eating, she glimpsed the new door guard and it was DIFFERENT. In the horse world, different is scary. Very, very scary. Just look at this face. 


For those not familiar with equine behavior, this is classic. 


You can see the whites around Vienna's eyes, her nostrils are wide open, and if I had taken a side view, you would also be able to see the tension above her eyes and at the corners of her mouth. She could be in a textbook labelled 'fearful horse'. 

Poor thing. I left her to get acquainted with the new door guard while she grabbed mouthfuls of food in between keeping a wary eye on the fearful object in the door to her stall. 

Buddy either hadn't noticed or didn't care. There was dinner to eat and he knows what is important. 

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