Sahara - Week Two

This morning, on the beach:

Today was the end of week two with Sahara. She and Chocolate are now total buds. She follows him like a shadow. Because the doctor who owns the property behind us where Chocolate and Sahara stay has family coming for the weekend, we built Sahara a little corral - okay, a biggish stall - in a corner of our yard. We can tie Chocolate on the other side (like we did the month or so until the fence got fixed) but Sahara isn't rope-trained yet. She gets all tangled up. And that's dangerous for her and for whoever goes in to free her. So tonight we put her in her new stall to feed her and get her used to it. It's right next to the barport so we put on the lights and the music so she can get used to that too. The whole hour-and-a-half or two hours she was gone, Chocolate snorted and ran around and nickered for her. When he's out of the yard, she stands at the gate and nickers for him. And we thought it was going to be hard for us to give her up! (Assuming of course we ever do decide to give her up.)

Sahara continues to improve. She's showing signs of filling out. Her ribs are less pronounced, the ridge above her eyes is filling in, and she's starting to get a butt. Her energy levels are getting better as well. She's friskier, brighter.

We had a couple of mishaps at feeding time this week. Bottom line, I got kicked twice. Neither time was especially hard but the second kick left a pretty good bruise on my thigh. But we've since worked out some strategies to deal with feeding and we haven't had any more problems.

Elaine has been laid up with a bad ankle so I've ridden Chocolate a couple of times this week. I do understand why she loves it. I'm not nearly as good a rider as she is so I don't work him the way she does. Yesterday we rode on good long way on the beach and it was beautiful. Elaine and I are both looking forward to having a second horse so we can ride together. Sahara won't be that second horse for a long, long time.

There are more pictures of Sahara and Chocolate on our Flickr site.