Ramona and Queen

As we all know, Queen is a rather friendly filly, always bouncing off the walls of her stall, running around in the pasture trying to befriend anything and everything that breathes - and occasionally some things that don’t breathe… She means no harm, but she often comes across very strongly to other horses. Even more so when in smaller enclosures.

On our fourth day at the Töfratré Event, the owner of one of the neighboring stables, Badger Buddies Ranch, reached out to me about potentially socializing her filly Jane. I happily obliged, knowing Queen would be the perfect, all too energetic little filly for the job. I grabbed Queen from her stall that morning and began walking her around the communal paddocks until we finally found the one Jane was grazing in.

“How would you like to introduce the two?” I asked Jane’s owner.

“Hmmm… just let Queen into the paddock, and the two will figure one another out,” she replied.

“Alrighty!” I replied. I then looked at Queen and whispered to her, “Okay little girl, I want you to behave. Please don’t scare her with your craziness…”

I unclipped Queen’s lead rope from her halter while Jane’s owner slowly unlatched and opened the gate. Without hesitation, Queen set off into the paddock, galloping at full speed toward the poor nervous mare in the corner.

“Queen! No!” I yelled, and of course, Queen ignored me entirely and kept going. She started trying to play with the other filly, excited about the fact that there was another filly her age stood right in front of her. Poor Jane was running as fast as she could away from Queen, but Queen kept on catching up to her with her long legs. Finally, Jane stopped and started kicking out at Queen. Having seen Jane’s hooves flying straight at her face, Queen stopped in her tracks and started retreating back toward me. I started making my way over to the gate, planning on getting her out of the paddock as quickly as possible. Both fillies needed some time to themselves after that rough introduction…

Jane’s owner threw out her arm out in front of me to stop me from getting her out and said, “Just give them a minute, Jane will come around.”

We waited a few minutes, and her statement appeared to be correct. Jane calmed down at the other end of the paddock and began grazing. Queen saw this and started making her way over toward Jane. Having learned from her original attempt to make friends, Queen approached her slowly, lowered her head about a yard away and began to graze. The two quietly grazed near one another for a little while, until Jane finally picked up her head and moved closer to Queen, lowering her head again to graze. Queen became a little tense at this movement, and stopped grazing. Jane let out a soft whinny to her and Queen immediately became less tense. She moved even closer to Jane, now standing together grazing happily. They spent the rest of the day together in the pasture, grazing and laying around, enjoying the sunlight.

Both Jane’s owner and I let them be while we attended to all our other horses that we had brought along for the event. And by the end of the day, both mares seemed to have learned something from the other. Jane had become a little more sociable with new horses, and Queen quickly learned that she should not dive in to trying to make friendships at full speed.

”Maybe now she’ll actually get some more friends while we’re here” I thought to myself, chuckling.

Night was closing in, so it was time to run back out to the paddock and get Queen in for the night. I got to the paddock, lead rope in hand, and called Queen. The two fillies exchanged a friendly goodbye and Queen trotted over to the fence. I gave her some kisses on the nose and brought out the bag of treats that I hid in my coat pocket. Jane’s ears perked up on the other side of the pasture when she heard that crinkle of the carrot bag, and she walked over to me as well. I gave them both a few carrots and hooked up Queen’s lead rope. We walked back to her stall as she continued prodding my jacket with her nose, hoping the magical carrot holder would open and give her some more.