Biglets Mummy
Well-Known Member
I would love the forums opinions/thoughts on the rather strange behaviour of my dear old ex racer who is retired living the life of Riley, dressed in a smoking jacket with a large whiskey and a selection of magazines to browse through to pass his day.
He is a poppet , laid back , calm , completely bombproof and only retired at 24 after a tendon injury that kept flaring up. He is a joy in every sense and I simply adore him.
So…..go back to a few months ago and I moved into my new house with an old barn and room for a pony! Horsey Heaven so my Dad ,brothers and I set about converting the barn into stabling. The barn has previously had internal offices in so we took all the stud walling down ,repaired the floor and put up internal stables creating 2 22 x 16 spaces for his lordship and his mini shitland chums. The shitlands are a little lost in theirs so are considering illegal sub-letting.
To the back of the stables where the offices had been is a window in each stable– a normal house size window with a frame and glass that we decided to block up with a temporary fix until we could sort them.
Horses move in – all settled – all is well !
Until we decided to do the next step of the renovations and repair the windows – we decided to leave the frames in as the extra light was fantastic creating a huge light airy box for them to flop around in , entertain , hold card schools….
We removed all the glass , fixed the frame, replaced it with perplex , covered in a mesh with the plan to add huge shutters on the outside to close at bedtime or for that added layer of warmth in the winter. It looked fantastic – I made everyone come and look ! And then it all went wrong.
Mini Shitlands wandered in – stuck noses up at window, shrugged and then wandered off to watch Netflix or something- very happy bunnies but my chum went BALLISTIC ! I have never seen him in such a complete state – eyes rolling, racing around the stable, screaming…it was most dramatic.
Family gathered round – was it the noise from the road? Could he see the washing on the line? Did he have a reflection back into the stable? None of us could see the problem at all but he was completely distressed.
We decided to see if he calmed down so wandered back to the house and watched what was going on via a camera I have installed to spy on them ( Its brilliant btw).
I stuck it for 20 mins – I was so worried that he would colic with stress or hurt himself that Dad and I stood in the rain and hammered back up the OSB board that we had taken off to completely cover the window. Immediate calm. 30 mins later he was down and asleep completely worn out. I watched him until the early hours to make sure he was ok and checked via the camera every hour until morning when I got him out into his paddock. He was back to his calm ,happy self.
So the fabulous stable now has a dirty old bit of board blocking up the window and he is back in a large but quite dark stable and is happy as Larry.
Problem solved but its bugging us all as to why he reacted so violently – we have looked at everything and cannot work out what happened. Does anyone have a theory ? Or is he just an ungrateful sod x
He is a poppet , laid back , calm , completely bombproof and only retired at 24 after a tendon injury that kept flaring up. He is a joy in every sense and I simply adore him.
So…..go back to a few months ago and I moved into my new house with an old barn and room for a pony! Horsey Heaven so my Dad ,brothers and I set about converting the barn into stabling. The barn has previously had internal offices in so we took all the stud walling down ,repaired the floor and put up internal stables creating 2 22 x 16 spaces for his lordship and his mini shitland chums. The shitlands are a little lost in theirs so are considering illegal sub-letting.
To the back of the stables where the offices had been is a window in each stable– a normal house size window with a frame and glass that we decided to block up with a temporary fix until we could sort them.
Horses move in – all settled – all is well !
Until we decided to do the next step of the renovations and repair the windows – we decided to leave the frames in as the extra light was fantastic creating a huge light airy box for them to flop around in , entertain , hold card schools….
We removed all the glass , fixed the frame, replaced it with perplex , covered in a mesh with the plan to add huge shutters on the outside to close at bedtime or for that added layer of warmth in the winter. It looked fantastic – I made everyone come and look ! And then it all went wrong.
Mini Shitlands wandered in – stuck noses up at window, shrugged and then wandered off to watch Netflix or something- very happy bunnies but my chum went BALLISTIC ! I have never seen him in such a complete state – eyes rolling, racing around the stable, screaming…it was most dramatic.
Family gathered round – was it the noise from the road? Could he see the washing on the line? Did he have a reflection back into the stable? None of us could see the problem at all but he was completely distressed.
We decided to see if he calmed down so wandered back to the house and watched what was going on via a camera I have installed to spy on them ( Its brilliant btw).
I stuck it for 20 mins – I was so worried that he would colic with stress or hurt himself that Dad and I stood in the rain and hammered back up the OSB board that we had taken off to completely cover the window. Immediate calm. 30 mins later he was down and asleep completely worn out. I watched him until the early hours to make sure he was ok and checked via the camera every hour until morning when I got him out into his paddock. He was back to his calm ,happy self.
So the fabulous stable now has a dirty old bit of board blocking up the window and he is back in a large but quite dark stable and is happy as Larry.
Problem solved but its bugging us all as to why he reacted so violently – we have looked at everything and cannot work out what happened. Does anyone have a theory ? Or is he just an ungrateful sod x
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