Getting arnica pills into Beauty is turning out to be trickier than expected.
I have been slipping them inside chunks of apple – bear in mind they are tiny homeopathic sugar pills – but Beauty just won’t take them from me. Yesterday we had a mad situation where I was standing there holding the apple slice to her mouth and she gritted her teeth against it, absolutely refusing. I stood back, puzzled and trying to work it out. A horse that doesn’t like apple? I never heard of that!
So I put the apple on the ground in front of her and retreated. She picked it up immediately and ate it happily.
In the past, I have tried giving her a herbal treat once or twice. She seemed to have no idea what I was doing. I slipped it between pursed lips and she took it in thoughtfully.
I didn’t give it much thought before. I guess she has never been hand fed and that is probably a good thing. I had been determined not to create a treat monster with her the way I have done with my other horses. But to have a horse that not only has no interest in treats but flatly refuses hand food – very odd!
I am going to go and watch some polo this afternoon in an attempt to understand the life of a polo pony. I begin to wonder if there are things that I simply haven’t grasped about them. Maybe they don’t tend to get hand fed?
There is a polo club that meets in the field behind my house. I watched them loading up the other day and was fascinated to see how they did it. The horses got untied from the rail 3 at a time, then one by one, the girl threw their rope over their back and they ran up the ramp into the lorry – completely at liberty. It was remarkable! 6 horses loaded in about 5 minutes – all of their own volition.
